Analysis domain model for shared virtual environments

The field of shared virtual environments, which also encompasses online games and social 3D environments, has a system landscape consisting of multiple solutions that share great functional overlap. However, there is little system interoperability between the different solutions. A shared virtual environment has an associated problem domain that is highly complex raising difficult challenges to the development process, starting with the architectural design of the underlying system. This paper has two main contributions. The first contribution is a broad domain analysis of shared virtual environments, which enables developers to have a better understanding of the whole rather than the part(s). The second contribution is a reference domain model for discussing and describing solutions - the Analysis Domain Model

Enabling collaboration in virtual reality navigators

In this paper we characterize a feature superset for Collaborative Virtual Reality Environments (CVRE), and derive a component framework to transform stand-alone VR navigators into full-fledged multithreaded collaborative environments. The contributions of our approach rely on a cost-effective and extensible technique for loading software components into separate POSIX threads for rendering, user interaction and network communications, and adding a top layer for managing session collaboration. The framework recasts a VR navigator under a distributed peer-to-peer topology for scene and object sharing, using callback hooks for broadcasting remote events and multicamera perspective sharing with avatar interaction. We validate the framework by applying it to our own ALICE VR Navigator. Experimental results show that our approach has good performance in the collaborative inspection of complex models.Postprint (published version

Serious Games in Cultural Heritage

Although the widespread use of gaming for leisure purposes has been well documented, the use of games to support cultural heritage purposes, such as historical teaching and learning, or for enhancing museum visits, has been less well considered. The state-of-the-art in serious game technology is identical to that of the state-of-the-art in entertainment games technology. As a result the field of serious heritage games concerns itself with recent advances in computer games, real-time computer graphics, virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence. On the other hand, the main strengths of serious gaming applications may be generalised as being in the areas of communication, visual expression of information, collaboration mechanisms, interactivity and entertainment. In this report, we will focus on the state-of-the-art with respect to the theories, methods and technologies used in serious heritage games. We provide an overview of existing literature of relevance to the domain, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the described methods and point out unsolved problems and challenges. In addition, several case studies illustrating the application of methods and technologies used in cultural heritage are presented

Developing serious games for cultural heritage: a state-of-the-art review

Although the widespread use of gaming for leisure purposes has been well documented, the use of games to support cultural heritage purposes, such as historical teaching and learning, or for enhancing museum visits, has been less well considered. The state-of-the-art in serious game technology is identical to that of the state-of-the-art in entertainment games technology. As a result, the field of serious heritage games concerns itself with recent advances in computer games, real-time computer graphics, virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence. On the other hand, the main strengths of serious gaming applications may be generalised as being in the areas of communication, visual expression of information, collaboration mechanisms, interactivity and entertainment. In this report, we will focus on the state-of-the-art with respect to the theories, methods and technologies used in serious heritage games. We provide an overview of existing literature of relevance to the domain, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the described methods and point out unsolved problems and challenges. In addition, several case studies illustrating the application of methods and technologies used in cultural heritage are presented

A Framework for Designing 3d Virtual Environments

The process of design and development of virtual environments can be supported by tools and frameworks, to save time in technical aspects and focusing on the content. In this paper we present an academic framework which provides several levels of abstraction to ease this work. It includes state-of-the-art components we devised or integrated adopting open-source solutions in order to face specific problems. Its architecture is modular and customizable, the code is open-source.\u

DIVERSE: a Software Toolkit to Integrate Distributed Simulations with Heterogeneous Virtual Environments

We present DIVERSE (Device Independent Virtual Environments- Reconfigurable, Scalable, Extensible), which is a modular collection of complimentary software packages that we have developed to facilitate the creation of distributed operator-in-the-loop simulations. In DIVERSE we introduce a novel implementation of remote shared memory (distributed shared memory) that uses Internet Protocol (IP) networks. We also introduce a new method that automatically extends hardware drivers (not in the operating system kernel driver sense) into inter-process and Internet hardware services. Using DIVERSE, a program can display in a CAVE™, ImmersaDesk™, head mounted display (HMD), desktop or laptop without modification. We have developed a method of configuring user programs at run-time by loading dynamic shared objects (DSOs), in contrast to the more common practice of creating interpreted configuration languages. We find that by loading DSOs the development time, complexity and size of DIVERSE and DIVERSE user applications is significantly reduced. Configurations to support different I/O devices, device emulators, visual displays, and any component of a user application including interaction techniques, can be changed at run-time by loading different sets of DIVERSE DSOs. In addition, interpreted run-time configuration parsers have been implemented using DIVERSE DSOs; new ones can be created as needed. DIVERSE is free software, licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) and the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) licenses. We describe the DIVERSE architecture and demonstrate how DIVERSE was used in the development of a specific application, an operator-in-the-loop Navy ship-board crane simulator, which runs unmodified on a desktop computer and/or in a CAVE with motion base motion queuing