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

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

Virtual Reality Games for Motor Rehabilitation

This paper presents a fuzzy logic based method to track user satisfaction without the need for devices to monitor users physiological conditions. User satisfaction is the key to any product’s acceptance; computer applications and video games provide a unique opportunity to provide a tailored environment for each user to better suit their needs. We have implemented a non-adaptive fuzzy logic model of emotion, based on the emotional component of the Fuzzy Logic Adaptive Model of Emotion (FLAME) proposed by El-Nasr, to estimate player emotion in UnrealTournament 2004. In this paper we describe the implementation of this system and present the results of one of several play tests. Our research contradicts the current literature that suggests physiological measurements are needed. We show that it is possible to use a software only method to estimate user emotion

Neural Radiance Fields: Past, Present, and Future

The various aspects like modeling and interpreting 3D environments and surroundings have enticed humans to progress their research in 3D Computer Vision, Computer Graphics, and Machine Learning. An attempt made by Mildenhall et al in their paper about NeRFs (Neural Radiance Fields) led to a boom in Computer Graphics, Robotics, Computer Vision, and the possible scope of High-Resolution Low Storage Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality-based 3D models have gained traction from res with more than 1000 preprints related to NeRFs published. This paper serves as a bridge for people starting to study these fields by building on the basics of Mathematics, Geometry, Computer Vision, and Computer Graphics to the difficulties encountered in Implicit Representations at the intersection of all these disciplines. This survey provides the history of rendering, Implicit Learning, and NeRFs, the progression of research on NeRFs, and the potential applications and implications of NeRFs in today's world. In doing so, this survey categorizes all the NeRF-related research in terms of the datasets used, objective functions, applications solved, and evaluation criteria for these applications.Comment: 413 pages, 9 figures, 277 citation

Ambient occlusion and shadows for molecular graphics

Computer based visualisations of molecules have been produced as early as the 1950s to aid researchers in their understanding of biomolecular structures. An important consideration for Molecular Graphics software is the ability to visualise the 3D structure of the molecule in a clear manner. Recent advancements in computer graphics have led to improved rendering capabilities of the visualisation tools. The capabilities of current shading languages allow the inclusion of advanced graphic effects such as ambient occlusion and shadows that greatly improve the comprehension of the 3D shapes of the molecules. This thesis focuses on finding improved solutions to the real time rendering of Molecular Graphics on modern day computers. The methods of calculating ambient occlusion and both hard and soft shadows are examined and implemented to give the user a more complete experience when navigating large molecular structures

Designing and implementing interactive and realistic augmented reality experiences

In this paper, we propose an approach for supporting the design and implementation of interactive and realistic Augmented Reality (AR). Despite the advances in AR technology, most software applications still fail to support AR experiences where virtual objects appear as merged into the real setting. To alleviate this situation, we propose to combine the use of model-based AR techniques with the advantages of current game engines to develop AR scenes in which the virtual objects collide, are occluded, project shadows and, in general, are integrated into the augmented environment more realistically. To evaluate the feasibility of the proposed approach, we extended an existing game platform named GREP to enhance it with AR capacities. The realism of the AR experiences produced with the software was assessed in an event in which more than 100 people played two AR games simultaneously.This work is supported by the project CREAx and PACE funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (TIN2014-56534-R and TIN2016-77690-R)

Through the combining glass

Reflective optical combiners like beam splitters and two way mirrors are used in AR to overlap digital contents on the users' hands or bodies. Augmentations are usually unidirectional, either reflecting virtual contents on the user's body (Situated Augmented Reality) or augmenting user's reflections with digital contents (AR mirrors). But many other novel possibilities remain unexplored. For example, users' hands, reflected inside a museum AR cabinet, can allow visitors to interact with the artifacts exhibited. Projecting on the user's hands as their reflection cuts through the objects can be used to reveal objects' internals. Augmentations from both sides are blended by the combiner, so they are consistently seen by any number of users, independently of their location or, even, the side of the combiner through which they are looking. This paper explores the potential of optical combiners to merge the space in front and behind them. We present this design space, identify novel augmentations/interaction opportunities and explore the design space using three prototypes

Collision warning design in automotive head-up displays

Abstract. In the last few years, the automotive industry has experienced a large growth in the hardware and the underlying electronics. The industry benefits from both Human Machine Interface (HMI) research and modern technology. There are many applications of the Advanced Driver Assistant System (ADAS) and their positive impact on drivers is even more. Forward Collision Warning (FCW) is one of many applications of ADAS. In the last decades, different approaches and tools are used to implement FCW systems. Current Augmented Reality (AR) applications are feasible to integrate in modern cars. In this thesis work, we introduce three different FCW designs: static, animated and 3D animated warnings. We test the proposed designs in three different environments: day, night and rain. The designs static and animated achieve a minimum response time 0.486 s whereas the 3D animated warning achieves 1.153 s