The world is what you make it: an application of virtual reality to the tourism industry

The tourism industry is a highly information intensive-industiy. In few other areas of activity are the generation, gathering, processing, application and communication of information as important for dayto- day operations as they are for the tourism industry (Buhalis 1994). Traditional sources of tourism information, images, text, sound, animation and video, provide potential tourists with short and often rather limited glimpses of tourism destinations which may be inadequate to enable them to make informed decisions (Cheong 1995). In addition, these sources of tourist information provide only a passive experience as they often possess little involvement on the part of the potential tourist. Virtual Reality (VR), on the other hand, enables potential tourists to interact with and experience each tourist destination in high detail and provides them with enough information to make a well-informed tourist decision. When considering its application within the tourism industry, VR will offer the ability not only to view a destination, but also, to participate in the activities offered at the destination. Through VR the tourist advances from being a passive observer to being an active participant (Williams & Hobson 1994). This thesis addresses issues associated with the design and evaluation of a VR application to the tourism industry that provides users with all the traditional types of tourist information along with allowing them to experience a multi-participant, realistic, interactive and real-time walkthrough of real-life tourist destinations. In order to develop these walkthroughs, the basic concepts of VR had first to be analysed. This was achieved by gaining hands-on experience of the different types of VR hardware and software available in conjunction with an in-depth literature review. Following the completion of this analysis, an overview of the tourism industry was developed. This overview identified certain properties of the tourism product that lend themselves readily to the application of VR Once this was completed the final stage of the research was concerned with the development of the walkthroughs and the elicitation of knowledge from the development of these walkthroughs. There were many conclusions uncovered by this research but the most important was that VR can indeed be applied successfully to the tourism industry. The main areas of application will be in the areas of tourism policy and planning and the marketing of the tourism product. Another conclusion that was drawn from this research was that VR applications can help to generate realistic impressions and expectations of what can be experienced at a tourism location. The final outstanding conclusion drawn from this research was that potential tourists viewed the VR application as a decision making tool that increases their desire to actually visit a tourist location and not as a tourism substitute

MONUMENTAL-IT: A \u27ROBOTIC-WIKI\u27 MONUMENT FOR EMBODIED INTERACTION IN THE INFORMATION WORLD

ABSTRACT Conventional monuments are concrete manifestations of memories without the capacity to reflect individual interpretations of history. In an increasingly digital society, however, there is a need for configurable monuments reflecting our contemporary, open and complex community. “Monumental-IT” reflects the dynamic and inclusive character of our time. Rather than static, Monumental-IT is a dynamic, robotic, intelligent environment reconfigured or “retuned” by citizens and by historical information accumulating on the World Wide Web. This information is periodically “coded,” altering the multi-sensorial physical-digital “Robotic-Wiki” components of Monumental-IT. Monumental-IT is designed to embody a new form of human-robotic interaction evolving from the monument typology. This research is a response to three questions: What is the monument for a world that is increasingly digital and \u27free\u27?; How can intelligent systems \u27creatively\u27 reconcile current conceptualizations of history with monument‐making?; and, What role can intelligent systems and Human Centered Computing (HCC) play in creating significant, meaningful, physical, urban places for collective memories?. This research involves designing, prototyping, and empirically evaluating Monumental-IT. The research employs a mixed-methodological research design which includes: quasi-experimental design, usability, heuristic evaluations, and cognitive walkthroughs as its research methods; and multivariate statistics to validate significance and usability with real users and experts in the domain fields of \u27architectural-robotics\u27 and human factors psychology. Results strongly suggest that the four distinct configurations of the robotic, multi-sensorial Monumental-IT evoke four distinct emotions in users. As well, users interacting with the Monumental-IT prototype evaluate the design as strongly aiding their recollection of human events (here, the history of slavery in the testbed, Charleston, South Carolina, USA). Finally, users overwhelmingly evaluated the Monumental-IT design to be more apt for our increasingly digital society than conventional monument design. Key contributions are: the identification of metrics for evaluating complex digital-physical environments; the advancement of human-robotic interaction via environmental-scaled robotics and multi-sensorial features (colors, sounds and motions); and, the conceptualization of the monument as a cybernetic system

Interactive 2D and 3D Graphics over the World-Wide Web with ActionScript

Many efforts have been made to provide a mechanism for delivering interactive 3D content over the World-Wide Web. The majority of the solutions put forward require the use of a proprietary plug-in on the client browser and none of these required plug-ins have so far become part of the standard browser installation package. The Macromedia Flash player has however achieved near ubiquitous status as the standard plug-in for displaying interactive multimedia and graphics content. Flash does not provide native support for 3D graphics but the recent addition of the Shape Drawing API opens up the possibility of developers using ActionScript for this purpose. This paper describes the development of an ActionScript graphics library that consists of a set of reusable classes for adding interactive 2D and 3D graphics to Flash content. We describe these classes in detail, show examples of programs developed using them, and discuss the advantages of this approach

Mobile three-dimensional city maps

Maps are visual representations of environments and the objects within, depicting their spatial relations. They are mainly used in navigation, where they act as external information sources, supporting observation and decision making processes. Map design, or the art-science of cartography, has led to simplification of the environment, where the naturally three-dimensional environment has been abstracted to a two-dimensional representation, populated with simple geometrical shapes and symbols. However, abstract representation requires a map reading ability. Modern technology has reached the level where maps can be expressed in digital form, having selectable, scalable, browsable and updatable content. Maps may no longer even be limited to two dimensions, nor to an abstract form. When a real world based virtual environment is created, a 3D map is born. Given a realistic representation, would the user no longer need to interpret the map, and be able to navigate in an inherently intuitive manner? To answer this question, one needs a mobile test platform. But can a 3D map, a resource hungry real virtual environment, exist on such resource limited devices? This dissertation approaches the technical challenges posed by mobile 3D maps in a constructive manner, identifying the problems, developing solutions and providing answers by creating a functional system. The case focuses on urban environments. First, optimization methods for rendering large, static 3D city models are researched and a solution provided by combining visibility culling, level-of-detail management and out-of-core rendering, suited for mobile 3D maps. Then, the potential of mobile networking is addressed, developing efficient and scalable methods for progressive content downloading and dynamic entity management. Finally, a 3D navigation interface is developed for mobile devices, and the research validated with measurements and field experiments. It is found that near realistic mobile 3D city maps can exist in current mobile phones, and the rendering rates are excellent in 3D hardware enabled devices. Such 3D maps can also be transferred and rendered on-the-fly sufficiently fast for navigation use over cellular networks. Real world entities such as pedestrians or public transportation can be tracked and presented in a scalable manner. Mobile 3D maps are useful for navigation, but their usability depends highly on interaction methods - the potentially intuitive representation does not imply, for example, faster navigation than with a professional 2D street map. In addition, the physical interface limits the usability

Fidelity optimization in distributed virtual environments

In virtual environment systems, the ultimate goal is delivery of the highest-fidelity user experience possible. This dissertation shows that is possible to increase the scalability of distributed virtual environments (DVEs), in a tractable fashion, through a novel application of optimization techniques. Fidelity is maximized by utilizing the given display and network capacity in an optimal fashion, individually tuned for multiple users, in a manner most appropriate to a specific DVE application. This optimization is accomplished using the QUICK framework for managing the display and request of representations for virtual objects. Ratings of representation Quality, object Importance, and representation Cost are included in model descriptions as special annotations. The QUICK optimization computes the fidelity contribution of a representation by combining these annotations with specifications of user task and platform capability. This dissertation contributes the QUICK optimization algorithms; a software framework for experimentation; and associated general purpose formats for codifying Quality, Importance, Cost, task, and platform capability. Experimentation with the QUICK framework has shown overwhelming advantages in comparison with standard resource management techniqueshttp://www.archive.org/details/fidelityoptimiza00cappCivilian author.Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Texts and reading in virtual environments : history and prospects

textThis thesis examines the activity of pleasure reading as conducted within three kinds of virtual environments: role-playing and adventure video games, Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) such as World of Warcraft, and graphical online social worlds such as Second Life. I ask how and to what extent different types of virtual environments are able to provide immersive reading experiences. This analysis relies upon the concepts of telic (purpose-driven) and paratelic (pleasure-driven) modes of reading, and I examine how virtual environments provide affordances for one or the other mode. How they do so usually has to do with how their situate reading materials in relation to the environment’s diegetic world, as well as whether the diegetic world is coherent and bounded. I conclude that while paratelic reading is encouraged in all virtual environments, role-playing and adventure video games are conducive to partially telic reading experiences, with players reading in order to better understand the diegetic world in which they act. MMOGs feature largely immutable diegetic worlds lacking normal relations of causality, but they still manage to some degree to encourage telic reading by circumscribing and enriching the world with lore. Virtual social worlds are generally unable to provide this sort of telic reading experience due to their lack of coherent diegetic worlds, and their effectiveness for paratelic reading is currently hampered by unwieldy interfaces and lack of innovation in the format of virtual books. Although MMOGs and social virtual worlds both feature synchronous collaboration between players with the potential for emergent narratives, neither has been able to leverage this advantage for the creation of immersive reading experiences. Finally, all three forms of virtual environment have inspired innovative user-created narratives and interfaces, but they have done so outside the contexts of their diegetic game worlds, in the sphere of participant culture.Informatio