Viewpoint oscillation improves the perception of distance travelled based on optic flow

When static observers are presented with a visual simulation of forward self-motion, they generally misestimate distance travelled relative to a previously seen distant target: It has been suggested that this finding can be accounted for by a “leaky path integration” model. In the present study, using a similar experimental procedure, this result was confirmed. It was also established that combining the translational optical flow with simulated head oscillations (similar to those during natural walking) improved the subjects' perception of the distance travelled in comparison with a purely translational flow. This improvement may be attributable to the fact that an optic flow pattern resembling that associated with walking enhances the path integration process. In a subsequent experiment, we investigated whether it was the biological or the rhythmical characteristics of the simulation that enhanced the subjects' estimates of the distance travelled. The results obtained confirm that adding rhythmic components to the optic flow pattern improved the accuracy of subjects' perception of the distance travelled. However, no significant differences between biological and rhythmical oscillations were detected. These results relate to recent studies on the effects of smooth and jittering optic flows on vection onset and strength. One possible conclusion is that oscillations may increase the global retinal motion and thus improve the vection and path integration processes. Another possibility is that the nonmonotonous pattern of retinal motion induced by oscillatory inputs may maintain optimum sensitivity to the optic flow over time and thus improve the accuracy of subjects' perception of the distance travelled

Penempatan Posisi Kamera Secara Otomatis Untuk Sutradara Virtual Dalam Machinima Berbasis Logika Fuzzy

Machinima adalah sebuah teknologi pencitraan komputer yang biasanya digunakan untuk membuat permainan komputer dan animasi. Machinima akan meletakan semua property dan pemain film ke dalam lingkungan virtual, dalam hal ini penempatan posisi kameranya. Karena sinematografi melengkapi machinima, memungkinkan untuk mensimulasikan gaya seorang sutradara dalam penempatan posisi kamera di lingkungan virtual. Dalam aplikasi permainan komputer, gaya sutradara adalah satu satu faktor dalam sinematik yang sangat berpengaruh, nuansa bermain game akan berbeda jika diterapkan gaya yang berbeda walau pada adegan atau aksi yang sama. Penelitian ini mengusulkan sebuah sistem yang diberi nama Automatically Cinematography Engine (ACE), sebuah engine untuk menempatkan posisi kamera virtual dan melakukan profile terhadap gaya sutradara dengan pendekatan berbasis logika fuzzy. Sistem yang pertama adalah sistem yang mampu menempatkan posisi kamera virtual sesuai dengan gaya sutradara menggunakan logika fuzzy. Yang kedua adalah sistem yang mampu secara otomatis melakukan profile gaya sutradara dengan menggunakan logika fuzzy. Digunakan 19 variabel output dan 15 variabel hasil perhitungan lainnya dari hasil ekstraksi animasi dari dua gaya sutradara yang berbeda. Hasil perhitungan menghasilkan diagram area plot dan histogram dan dengan menganalisa histogram, gaya sutradara yang berbeda dapat diklasifikasikan. ================================================================================================ Machinima is a computer imaging technology typically used in games and animation. It prints all movie cast properties into a virtual environment by means of a camera positioning. Since cinematography is complementary to Machinima, it is possible to simulate a director's style via various camera placements in this environment. In a gaming application, the director's style is one of the most impressive cinematic factors, where a whole different gaming experience can be obtained using different styles applied to the same scene. This research describes Automatically Cinematography Engine (ACE) an engine for camera positioning and profiling a director’s style using fuzzy logic approach. The first one is a system capable to positioning a virtual camera in virtual environment automatically according to a director’s style using fuzzy logic. The second is a system capable of automatically profile a director's style using fuzzy logic. This research employed 19 output variables and 15 other calculated variables from the animation extraction data to profile two different directors' styles from five scenes. Area plots and histograms were generated, and, by analyzing the histograms, different director's styles could be subsequently classified

Personified and Multistate Camera Motions for First-Person Navigation in Desktop Virtual Reality

Abstract — In this paper we introduce novel “Camera Motions ” (CMs) to improve the sensations related to locomotion in virtual environments (VE). Traditional Camera Motions are artificial oscillating motions applied to the subjective viewpoint when walking in the VE, and they are meant to evoke and reproduce the visual flow generated during a human walk. Our novel camera motions are: (1) multistate, (2) personified, and (3) they can take into account the topography of the virtual terrain. Being multistate, our CMs can account for different states of locomotion in VE namely: walking, but also running and sprinting. Being personified, our CMs can be adapted to avatar’s physiology such as to its size, weight or training status. They can then take into account avatar’s fatigue and recuperation for updating visual CMs accordingly. Last, our approach is adapted to the topography of the VE. Running over a strong positive slope would rapidly decrease the advance speed of the avatar, increase its energy loss, and eventually change the locomotion mode, influencing the visual feedback of the camera motions. Our new approach relies on a locomotion simulator partially inspired by human physiology and implemented for a real-time use in Desktop VR. We have conducted a series of experiments to evaluate the perception of our new CMs by naive participants. Results notably show that participants could discriminate and perceive transitions between the different locomotion modes, by relying exclusively on our CMs. They could also perceive some properties of the avatar being used and, overall, very well appreciated the new CMs techniques. Taken together, our results suggest that our new CMs could be introduced in Desktop VR applications involving first-person navigation, in order to enhance sensations of walking, running, and sprinting, with potentially different avatars and over uneven terrains, such as for: training, virtual visits or video games. Index Terms—Navigation, Camera Motions, locomotion simulation.

Communicating the Unspeakable: Linguistic Phenomena in the Psychedelic Sphere

Psychedelics can enable a broad and paradoxical spectrum of linguistic phenomena from the unspeakability of mystical experience to the eloquence of the songs of the shaman or curandera. Interior dialogues with the Other, whether framed as the voice of the Logos, an alien download, or communion with ancestors and spirits, are relatively common. Sentient visual languages are encountered, their forms unrelated to the representation of speech in natural language writing systems. This thesis constructs a theoretical model of linguistic phenomena encountered in the psychedelic sphere for the field of altered states of consciousness research (ASCR). The model is developed from a neurophenomenological perspective, especially the work of Francisco Varela, and Michael Winkelman’s work in shamanistic ASC, which in turn builds on the biogenetic structuralism of Charles Laughlin, John McManus, and Eugene d’Aquili. Neurophenomenology relates the physical and functional organization of the brain to the subjective reports of lived experience in altered states as mutually informative, without reducing consciousness to one or the other. Consciousness is seen as a dynamic multistate process of the recursive interaction of biology and culture, thereby navigating the traditional dichotomies of objective/subjective, body/mind, and inner/outer realities that problematically characterize much of the discourse in consciousness studies. The theoretical work of Renaissance scholar Stephen Farmer on the evolution of syncretic and correlative systems and their relation to neurobiological structures provides a further framework for the exegesis of the descriptions of linguistic phenomena in first-person texts of long-term psychedelic selfexploration. Since the classification of most psychedelics as Schedule I drugs, legal research came to a halt; self-experimentation as research did not. Scientists such as Timothy Leary and John Lilly became outlaw scientists, a social aspect of the “unspeakability” of these experiences. Academic ASCR has largely side-stepped examination of the extensive literature of psychedelic selfexploration. This thesis examines aspects of both form and content from these works, focusing on those that treat linguistic phenomena, and asking what these linguistic experiences can tell us about how the psychedelic landscape is constructed, how it can be navigated, interpreted, and communicated within its own experiential field, and communicated about to make the data accessible to inter-subjective comparison and validation. The methodological core of this practice-based research is a technoetic practice as defined by artist and theoretician Roy Ascott: the exploration of consciousness through interactive, artistic, and psychoactive technologies. The iterative process of psychedelic self-exploration and creation of interactive software defines my own technoetic practice and is the means by which I examine my states of consciousness employing the multidimensional visual language Glide