Collaborative immersive authoring tool for real-time creation of multisensory VR experiences

With the appearance of innovative virtual reality (VR) technologies, the need to create immersive content arose. Although there are already some non-immersive solutions to address immersive audio-visual content, there are no solutions that allow the creation of immersive multisensory content. This work proposes a novel architecture for a collaborative immersive tool that allows the creation of multisensory VR experiences in real-time, thus promoting the expeditious development, adoption, and use of immersive systems and enabling the building of custom-solutions that can be used in an intuitive manner to support organizations’ business initiatives. To validate the presented proposal, two approaches for the authoring tools (Desktop interface and Immersive interface) were subjected to a set of tests and evaluations consisting of a usability study that demonstrated not only the participants’ acceptance of the authoring tool but also the importance of using immersive interfaces for the creation of such VR experiences.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Designing a User-Metaverse Interface for the Industrial-Metaverse

The Industrial-Metaverse will create interactions between the physical and virtual worlds to extend operations in the physical industry. This particularity and the demand for increasing immersion in the Metaverse require using XR technologies called User-Metaverse interfaces (UMI). How such a UMI must be designed for the industrial-Metaverse is unknown. This study adopts a design science approach to design a UMI based on social cognitive theory (SCT). According to SCT, creating user-generated Metaverse content is crucial to the UMI design. It empowers users to generate content through their efforts, leading to higher self-efficacy and user engagement. We formulate two theoretically based design principles and instantiate a software artifact, which we evaluate in a laboratory experiment with 57 participants. Our study shows the importance of belief in success in the design of future UMI. Furthermore, our design principles show significant positive outcome expectations of users in their interaction with the software artifact

Design and evaluation of a choreography-based virtual reality authoring tool for experiential learning in industrial training

The use of virtual reality (VR) for industrial training helps minimize risks and costs by allowing more frequent and varied use of experiential learning activities, leading to active and improved learning. However, creating VR training experiences is costly and time-consuming, requiring software development experts. Additionally, current authoring tools lack integration with existing data and are desktop-oriented, which detach the pedagogic process of creating the immersive experience from experiencing it in a situated context. In this article, we present a novel interactive approach for immersive authoring of VR-based experiential training by the trainers themselves, from inside the virtual environment and without the support of development experts. The design includes identifying interactable elements, such as 3-D models, equipment, tools, settings, and environment. The trainer also specifies by demonstration the actions to be performed by trainees, as a virtual choreography. During course execution, trainees’ activities are also registered as virtual choreographies and matched to those specified by the trainer. Thus, trainer and trainee are culturally situated within their area semantics and social discourse, rather than adopting concepts of the VR system for the learning content. We conducted a usability case study with professionals from an international wind energy company, using detailed models of wind turbines and real-world procedures. Trainers set up a training course using the immersive authoring tool, and trainees executed the course. The learning experience and usability were analyzed, and the training was certified by comparing real-world task completion between a user who had undergone virtual training and a user who did not.Manuscript received 25 June 2021; revised 30 November 2021 and 18 February 2022; accepted 2 March 2022. Date of publication 7 March 2022; date of current version 21 October 2022. This work was supported in part by the ERDF - European Regional Development Fund through the Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation - COMPETE 2020 under the Portugal 2020 Partnership Agreement, in part by the Portuguese National Innovation Agency (ANI) under Project POCI-01-0247-FEDER038524, and in part by Portuguese funding agency, FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, under Project UIDB/50014/2020. An earlier version of this paper was presented in part at the 2021 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D UserInterfaces[DOI: 10.1109/VRW52623.2021.00199].(Corresponding author: Fernando Cassola.) Fernando Cassola, Daniel Mendes, and Ant onio Coelho are with the INESC TEC, and Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, 4099-002 Porto, Portugal (e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]). Manuel Pinto and Hugo Paredes are with the INESC TEC and University of Tras-os-Montes e Alto Douro, 5000-801 Vila Real, Portugal (e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]). Leonel Morgado is with the INESC TEC and Universidade Aberta, 1250-100 Lisboa, Portugal (e-mail: [email protected]). Sara Costa, Luıs Anjos, David Marques, Filipe Rosa, Ana Maia, and Helga Tavares are with the Vestas Wind Systems, 2670-327 Loures, Portugal (email: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]). Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TLT.2022.3157065info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The threshold of the real: A site for participatory resistance in Blast Theory's Uncle Roy all around you (2003)

This article examines the collision of virtual and real spaces through simultaneous live and online play in Uncle Roy All Around You, and how this disruption of immersion is used to expose the habitual engagements associated with the digital interface. The nature of the participants' immersion and the subsequent reintegration into the real will be explored, before attempting to articulate what defines this piece as politically resistant, through discussion of a self reflexive participation, which undermines what Baudrillard terms the 'simulated response' (Baudrillard 1985/1988 p.216

Investigating Real-time Touchless Hand Interaction and Machine Learning Agents in Immersive Learning Environments

The recent surge in the adoption of new technologies and innovations in connectivity, interaction technology, and artificial realities can fundamentally change the digital world. eXtended Reality (XR), with its potential to bridge the virtual and real environments, creates new possibilities to develop more engaging and productive learning experiences. Evidence is emerging that thissophisticated technology offers new ways to improve the learning process for better student interaction and engagement. Recently, immersive technology has garnered much attention as an interactive technology that facilitates direct interaction with virtual objects in the real world. Furthermore, these virtual objects can be surrogates for real-world teaching resources, allowing for virtual labs. Thus XR could enable learning experiences that would not bepossible in impoverished educational systems worldwide. Interestingly, concepts such as virtual hand interaction and techniques such as machine learning are still not widely investigated in immersive learning. Hand interaction technologies in virtual environments can support the kinesthetic learning pedagogical approach, and the need for its touchless interaction nature hasincreased exceptionally in the post-COVID world. By implementing and evaluating real-time hand interaction technology for kinesthetic learning and machine learning agents for self-guided learning, this research has addressed these underutilized technologies to demonstrate the efficiency of immersive learning. This thesis has explored different hand-tracking APIs and devices to integrate real-time hand interaction techniques. These hand interaction techniques and integrated machine learning agents using reinforcement learning are evaluated with different display devices to test compatibility. The proposed approach aims to provide self-guided, more productive, and interactive learning experiences. Further, this research has investigated ethics, privacy, and security issues in XR and covered the future of immersive learning in the Metaverse.<br/

Investigating Real-time Touchless Hand Interaction and Machine Learning Agents in Immersive Learning Environments

The recent surge in the adoption of new technologies and innovations in connectivity, interaction technology, and artificial realities can fundamentally change the digital world. eXtended Reality (XR), with its potential to bridge the virtual and real environments, creates new possibilities to develop more engaging and productive learning experiences. Evidence is emerging that thissophisticated technology offers new ways to improve the learning process for better student interaction and engagement. Recently, immersive technology has garnered much attention as an interactive technology that facilitates direct interaction with virtual objects in the real world. Furthermore, these virtual objects can be surrogates for real-world teaching resources, allowing for virtual labs. Thus XR could enable learning experiences that would not bepossible in impoverished educational systems worldwide. Interestingly, concepts such as virtual hand interaction and techniques such as machine learning are still not widely investigated in immersive learning. Hand interaction technologies in virtual environments can support the kinesthetic learning pedagogical approach, and the need for its touchless interaction nature hasincreased exceptionally in the post-COVID world. By implementing and evaluating real-time hand interaction technology for kinesthetic learning and machine learning agents for self-guided learning, this research has addressed these underutilized technologies to demonstrate the efficiency of immersive learning. This thesis has explored different hand-tracking APIs and devices to integrate real-time hand interaction techniques. These hand interaction techniques and integrated machine learning agents using reinforcement learning are evaluated with different display devices to test compatibility. The proposed approach aims to provide self-guided, more productive, and interactive learning experiences. Further, this research has investigated ethics, privacy, and security issues in XR and covered the future of immersive learning in the Metaverse.<br/

ARLearn: augmented reality meets augmented virtuality

Ternier, S., Klemke, R., Kalz, M., Van Ulzen, P., & Specht, M. (2012). ARLearn: augmented reality meets augmented virtuality [Special issue]. Journal of Universal Computer Science - Technology for learning across physical and virtual spaces, 18(15), 2143-2164.This article deals with educational opportunities for mixed reality games and related scenarios for learning. It discusses several issues and educational challenges to be tackled when linking augmented reality and augmented virtuality. Second, the paper describes the architecture of the ARLearn system which offers highly flexible support for different educational settings. Three prototypical use cases implemented based on the underlying ARLearn framework are discussed, which are a field trip system, an augmented Google StreetView client called StreetLearn, and a real time crisis intervention game. ARLearn combines real time notification and mixed reality games across Mobile Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality and the authors aim to use the underlying (open source) framework for further case studies and mixed reality applications for learning support

Keep it simple : Lowering the Barrier for Authoring Serious Games

Background. Despite the continuous and abundant growth of the game market the uptake of serious games in education has been limited. Games require complex technologies and are difficult to organise and to embed in the curriculum. Aim. This article explores to what extent game templates and game authoring processes can be designed that can be easily adopted and adapted by teachers while only using openly available tools. Method. It discusses the design and first evaluation of two game platforms: ARGUMENT, based on a wiki, and ARLEARN, a toolkit based on openly available Google technologies. ARGUMENT is a text-based game challenging students to take a position on a given topic. ARLEARN offers an explicit mobile and virtual gameplay environment and a defined authoring process to create game scripts. Results. ARGUMENT and ARLEARN have been evaluated in four small-scale studies, where educators designed game scenarios and students played the resulting games. Conclusions. The results indicate that both tools are useful instruments that can be operated by teachers to build games and game-alike educational activities and, additionally, are a valuable step to gain experience with serious games.SURFnet/Kennisnet (ARGUMENT, StreetLearn, ARLearn), UNHC