Development of multiple media documents

Development of documents in multiple media involves activities in three different fields, the technical, the discoursive and the procedural. The major development problems of artifact complexity, cognitive processes, design basis and working context are located where these fields overlap. Pending the emergence of a unified approach to design, any method must allow for development at the three levels of discourse structure, media disposition and composition, and presentation. Related work concerned with generalised discourse structures, structured documents, production methods for existing multiple media artifacts, and hypertext design offer some partial forms of assistance at different levels. Desirable characteristics of a multimedia design method will include three phases of production, a variety of possible actions with media elements, an underlying discoursive structure, and explicit comparates for review

Experimental Approaches to the Composition of Interactive Video Game Music

This project explores experimental approaches and strategies to the composition of interactive music for the medium of video games. Whilst music in video games has not enjoyed the technological progress that other aspects of the software have received, budgets expand and incomes from releases grow. Music is now arguably less interactive than it was in the 1990’s, and whilst graphics occupy large amounts of resources and development time, audio does not garner the same attention. This portfolio develops strategies and audio engines, creating music using the techniques of aleatoric composition, real-time remixing of existing work, and generative synthesisers. The project created music for three ‘open-form’ games : an example of the racing genre (Kart Racing Pro); an arena-based first-person shooter (Counter-Strike : Source); and a real-time strategy title (0 A.D.). These games represent a cross-section of ‘sandbox’- type games on the market, as well as all being examples of games with open-ended or open-source code

The display of electronic commerce within virtual environments

In today’s competitive business environment, the majority of companies are expected to be represented on the Internet in the form of an electronic commerce site. In an effort to keep up with current business trends, certain aspects of interface design such as those related to navigation and perception may be overlooked. For instance, the manner in which a visitor to the site might perceive the information displayed or the ease with which they navigate through the site may not be taken into consideration. This paper reports on the evaluation of the electronic commerce sites of three different companies, focusing specifically on the human factors issues such as perception and navigation. Heuristic evaluation, the most popular method for investigating user interface design, is the technique employed to assess each of these sites. In light of the results from the analysis of the evaluation data, virtual environments are suggested as a way of improving the navigation and perception display constraints

Circuit tutor : a computer-aided learning package for electrical engineering

The development of Circuit Tutor, the subject of this dissertation, resulted from a conviction that computers can further enrich the Electronic Engineering curriculum. After an investigation into the different roles of the computer in education the use of modelling and simulation was selected as an effective Computer Aided Learning method. It was realised that the development of any non-trivial simulation program is however not an easy task. The programmer must not only model the circuit behaviour, but also write the man-machine interface (MMI). The main goal of Circuit Tutor was to provide a ready-made simulation environment which makes effective use of the graphics capabilities of the microcomputer for the simulation of a whole class of electrical circuit simulations. To facilitate rapid prototyping the installer is provided with: (1) a man-machine interface which provides the user with a graph, 3 meters, a circuit diagram of the circuit, a menu facility, windows to view circuit parameters and outputs: (2) a program scheduler; (3) a library of maths functions, including Gauss-Jordan elimination of complex matrices; and (4) Circuit Draw: a utility to draw a circuit diagram. Particular emphasis was placed on the design of the user's interface. It has been possible to restrict the effort to link in a new circuit model to 3 modifications to the man-machine interface (MMI) part of the program. Present software and MMI design were investigated. Circuit Tutor and Circuit Draw were developed using modular software design techniques. A modular design chart similar to that proposed by Wiener (1984) was found to be useful during the design stages of both Circuit Tutor and Circuit Draw. Available computer languages for the IBM PC were evaluated and Turbo Pascal selected, as it offered most of the features necessary for the implementation of a modern, modular software design. Four circuits were implemented to serve as examples. The documentation was structured in a manner appropriate to a software project: Part 1 gives an introduction to computers in education and provides the rationale for the use of simulation. A brief overview of Circuit Tutor and Circuit Draw is presented. Part 2 contains the User's Reference Manual for Circuit Tutor and the Circuit Draw Utility. Part 3 contains the Designer's Reference Manual for Circuit Tutor and the Circuit Draw Utility

Digital Competence and Literacy: Developing New Narrative Formats. The «Dragon Age: Origins» Videogame

The approach of this article is centered on the concepts of digital competence and new narrative formats. We aim to apply these dimensions to the videogame «Dragon Age Origins», winner of the 2009 videogame of the year award. Its features - plot, characters and interactivity – make it ideal reading material in other formats and are highly motivational for young people. The development of digital competence signifies new literacy, and it is necessary to find new stimulating resources that combine the fun and formative dimensions. Equally relevant are multimodal texts (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2001), especially new narrative formats that imply social progress, as the ways of reading are different. The texts have acquired new formats with the same quality as books but they sometimes motivate users more. This is the case of «Dragon Age Origins», a dark heroic fantasy role-playing game set in a unique world containing a story to be read and experienced. Our analysis of the videogame discusses whether it should be considered a form of reading or not

Structure Preserving Large Imagery Reconstruction

With the explosive growth of web-based cameras and mobile devices, billions of photographs are uploaded to the internet. We can trivially collect a huge number of photo streams for various goals, such as image clustering, 3D scene reconstruction, and other big data applications. However, such tasks are not easy due to the fact the retrieved photos can have large variations in their view perspectives, resolutions, lighting, noises, and distortions. Fur-thermore, with the occlusion of unexpected objects like people, vehicles, it is even more challenging to find feature correspondences and reconstruct re-alistic scenes. In this paper, we propose a structure-based image completion algorithm for object removal that produces visually plausible content with consistent structure and scene texture. We use an edge matching technique to infer the potential structure of the unknown region. Driven by the estimated structure, texture synthesis is performed automatically along the estimated curves. We evaluate the proposed method on different types of images: from highly structured indoor environment to natural scenes. Our experimental results demonstrate satisfactory performance that can be potentially used for subsequent big data processing, such as image localization, object retrieval, and scene reconstruction. Our experiments show that this approach achieves favorable results that outperform existing state-of-the-art techniques

A new approach to collaborative frameworks using shared objects

Multi-user graphical applications currently require the creation of a set of interface objects to maintain each participating display. The concept of shared objects allows a single object instance to be used in multiple contexts concurrently. This provides a novel way of reducing collaborative overheads by requiring the maintenance of only a single set of interface objects. The paper presents the concept of a shared-object collaborative framework and illustrates how the concept can be incorporated into an existing object-oriented toolkit

VIRTUAL EDUCATION

The internet economy is strongly connected with its developing modalities. A society desiring to be developed must be initially educated, in order to understand the benefits of the new modality of social integration. The practical finality of the “e” phenomenon in the educational field is the application of an eLearning system.virtual, education

Interactive simulations for quantum key distribution

We thank the UK Institute of Physics and the University of St Andrews for funding the simulation developmentSecure communication protocols are becoming increasingly important, e.g. for internet-based communication. Quantum key distribution (QKD) allows two parties, commonly called Alice and Bob, to generate a secret sequence of 0s and 1s called a key that is only known to themselves. Classically, Alice and Bob could never be certain that their communication was not compromised by a malicious eavesdropper. Quantum mechanics however makes secure communication possible. The fundamental principle of quantum mechanics that taking a measurement perturbs the system (unless the measurement is compatible with the quantum state) also applies to an eavesdropper. Using appropriate protocols to create the key, Alice and Bob can detect the presence of an eavesdropper by errors in their measurements. As part of the QuVis Quantum Mechanics Visualisation Project, we have developed a suite of four interactive simulations that demonstrate the basic principles of three different QKD protocols. The simulations use either polarised photons or spin 1/2 particles as physical realisations. The simulations and accompanying activities are freely available for use online or download, and run on a wide range of devices including tablets and PCs. Evaluation with students over three years was used to refine the simulations and activities. Preliminary studies show that the refined simulations and activities help students learn the basic principles of QKD at both the introductory and advanced undergraduate levels.PostprintPeer reviewe