Privacy in Gaming

Video game platforms and business models are increasingly built on collection, use, and sharing of personal information for purposes of both functionality and revenue. This paper examines privacy issues and explores data practices, technical specifications, and policy statements of the most popular games and gaming platforms to provide an overview of the current privacy legal landscape for mobile gaming, console gaming, and virtual reality devices. The research observes how modern gaming aligns with information privacy notions and norms and how data practices and technologies specific to gaming may affect users and, in particular, child gamers. After objectively selecting and analyzing major players in gaming, the research notes the many different ways that game companies collect data from users, including through cameras, sensors, microphones, and other hardware, through platform features for social interaction and user-generated content, and by means of tracking technologies like cookies and beacons. The paper also notes how location and biometric data are collected routinely through game platforms and explores issues specific to mobile gaming and pairing with smartphones and other external hardware devices. The paper concludes that transparency as to gaming companies’ data practices could be much improved, especially regarding sharing with third party affiliates. In addition, the research considers how children’s privacy may be particularly affected while gaming, determining that special attention should be paid to user control mechanisms and privacy settings within games and platforms, that social media and other interactive features create unique privacy and safety concerns for children which require gamer and parent education, and that privacy policy language is often incongruent with age ratings advertised to children and parents. To contribute additional research value and resources, the paper attaches a comprehensive set of appendices, on which the research conclusions are in part based, detailing the technical specifications and privacy policy statements of popular games and gaming platforms for mobile gaming, console gaming, and virtual reality devices

A Dose of Reality: Overcoming Usability Challenges in VR Head-Mounted Displays

We identify usability challenges facing consumers adopting Virtual Reality (VR) head-mounted displays (HMDs) in a survey of 108 VR HMD users. Users reported significant issues in interacting with, and being aware of their real-world context when using a HMD. Building upon existing work on blending real and virtual environments, we performed three design studies to address these usability concerns. In a typing study, we show that augmenting VR with a view of reality significantly corrected the performance impairment of typing in VR. We then investigated how much reality should be incorporated and when, so as to preserve users’ sense of presence in VR. For interaction with objects and peripherals, we found that selectively presenting reality as users engaged with it was optimal in terms of performance and users’ sense of presence. Finally, we investigated how this selective, engagement-dependent approach could be applied in social environments, to support the user’s awareness of the proximity and presence of others

Virtual Reality applied to biomedical engineering

Actualment, la realitat virtual esta sent tendència i s'està expandint a l'àmbit mèdic, fent possible l'aparició de nombroses aplicacions dissenyades per entrenar metges i tractar pacients de forma més eficient, així com optimitzar els processos de planificació quirúrgica. La necessitat mèdica i objectiu d'aquest projecte és fer òptim el procés de planificació quirúrgica per a cardiopaties congènites, que compren la reconstrucció en 3D del cor del pacient i la seva integració en una aplicació de realitat virtual. Seguint aquesta línia s’ha combinat un procés de modelat 3D d’imatges de cors obtinguts gracies al Hospital Sant Joan de Déu i el disseny de l’aplicació mitjançant el software Unity 3D gracies a l’empresa VISYON. S'han aconseguit millores en quant al software emprat per a la segmentació i reconstrucció, i s’han assolit funcionalitats bàsiques a l’aplicació com importar, moure, rotar i fer captures de pantalla en 3D de l'òrgan cardíac i així, entendre millor la cardiopatia que s’ha de tractar. El resultat ha estat la creació d'un procés òptim, en el que la reconstrucció en 3D ha aconseguit ser ràpida i precisa, el mètode d’importació a l’app dissenyada molt senzill, i una aplicació que permet una interacció atractiva i intuïtiva, gracies a una experiència immersiva i realista per ajustar-se als requeriments d'eficiència i precisió exigits en el camp mèdic

A Virtual Reality Movie

The goal of this project is to create a virtual reality movie that could be delivered to users through Google’s play store and the IOS store. This movie was written by the team and developed using Adobe Fuse, Autodesk Maya, and Unity3D Software. Using these tools we created characters, animated them in multiple scenes, and incorporated a virtual reality camera. This was then loaded onto a smart-phone to be put into a virtual reality viewing device such as Google Cardboar

Exploring Oculus Rift: A Historical Analysis of the ‘Virtual Reality’ Paradigm

This paper will first provide background information about Virtual Reality in order to better analyze its development throughout history and into the future. Next, this essay begins an in-depth historical analysis of how virtual reality has developed prior to 1970, a pivotal year in Virtual Reality history, followed by an exploration of how this development paradigm shifted between the 1970\u27s and the turn of the century. The historical analysis of virtual reality is concluded by covering the modern period from 2000-present. Finally, this paper examines the layout of the virtual reality field in respect to he history and innovations presented

Manual for the District Fisheries Analysis System (FAS): A Package for Fisheries Management and Research. Part 1: Fish Population Survey Data (DOC9 Data Base)

Report issued on: issued September, 1987INHS Technical Report prepared for unspecified recipien

vPlot

Robotic systems under development in the Santa Clara University Robotic Systems Laboratory (RSL) generate large amounts of data that must be interpreted in real-time. Many dimensions of this data must be visualized at once, such as temperature, location, and certainty of the measurement. Current data visualization softwares (such as Mathematica and Simulink) are ill-suited to visualize this much data, due to lack of customization. To solve this, we propose a system that allows users to view real-time streaming data in a virtual reality environment. This allows the user to easily interpret large, detailed datasets through an intuitive interface

Immersive user interface for first person view games

This study aimed to investigate the immersion of user interfaces that bring first person games using virtual reality based on the concepts established by the Diegesis theory. To conclude, a table has been created with identified elements of the games that bring more or less immersion to the player. Through the data collected, a questionnaire was developed to obtain information from developers, designers and players, in relation to the more immersive elements, and others with less immersive elements of the interfaces and concluding that the Diegetic and Spatial Interfaces are the most immersive for first-person games in virtual reality, and less immersive were the Meta and Non-Diegetic interfaces. Through this information, it is possible that there is a strong influence in the creation of games interfaces, after all we all want to be immersed when playing digital games.Este trabalho se propôs a investigar a imersão que as interfaces de usuário trazem a jogos de primeira pessoa que utilizam a realidade virtual, baseada nos conceitos estabelecidos pela teoria da Diegese. Por fim, foi criado uma tabela com interfaces identificadas dos jogos que trazem mais ou menos imersão ao jogador. Através dos dados coletados foi desenvolvido um questionário para obter informações de desenvolvedores, designers e jogadores, em relação com os elementos mais imersivos, e outros com elementos menos imersivos, e concluímos que as interfaces Diegetic e Spatial são as mais imersivas para os jogos em primeira pessoa na realidade virtual, e menos imersivas são as interfaces Meta e Non-Diegetic. Através dessa informação, é possível que exista uma influência forte na criação de interfaces de jogos, afinal todos queremos ficar imersos enquanto jogamos