Towards 3-D Sound: Spatial Presence and the Space Vacuum

This chapter demonstrates the evolution of relationships between sound design and music in cinematic representations of the interstellar space vacuum. Mera provides a framework for understanding how audiences believe they are physically present in the represented environment and argues that, in the late 2000s, we move towards three-dimensional (3-D) sound, an aesthetic and technical extension of the superfield and the ultrafield as defined by Chion and Kerins, respectively. 3-D Sound’s primary characteristic is the emancipation of music from a fixed sound-stage spatialization, resulting in greater fluidity between sound design and music. This chapter examines the relationship between two types of spatial presence, articulating both the audience’s suspension of disbelief within a film’s narrative world and the spatial presence of sound and music within a multichannel cinema environme

‘In the game’? Embodied subjectivity in gaming environments

Human-computer interactions are increasingly using more (or all) of the body as a control device. We identify a convergence between everyday bodily actions and activity within digital environments, and a trend towards incorporating natural or mimetic form of movement into gaming devices. We go on to reflect on the nature of player ‘embodiment’ in digital gaming environments by applying insights from the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Three conditions for digital embodiment are proposed, with implications for Calleja’s (2011) Player Involvement Model (PIM) of gaming discussed

MetaSpace II: Object and full-body tracking for interaction and navigation in social VR

MetaSpace II (MS2) is a social Virtual Reality (VR) system where multiple users can not only see and hear but also interact with each other, grasp and manipulate objects, walk around in space, and get tactile feedback. MS2 allows walking in physical space by tracking each user's skeleton in real-time and allows users to feel by employing passive haptics i.e., when users touch or manipulate an object in the virtual world, they simultaneously also touch or manipulate a corresponding object in the physical world. To enable these elements in VR, MS2 creates a correspondence in spatial layout and object placement by building the virtual world on top of a 3D scan of the real world. Through the association between the real and virtual world, users are able to walk freely while wearing a head-mounted device, avoid obstacles like walls and furniture, and interact with people and objects. Most current virtual reality (VR) environments are designed for a single user experience where interactions with virtual objects are mediated by hand-held input devices or hand gestures. Additionally, users are only shown a representation of their hands in VR floating in front of the camera as seen from a first person perspective. We believe, representing each user as a full-body avatar that is controlled by natural movements of the person in the real world (see Figure 1d), can greatly enhance believability and a user's sense immersion in VR.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures. Video: http://living.media.mit.edu/projects/metaspace-ii

The virtual playground: an educational virtual reality environment for evaluating interactivity and conceptual learning

The research presented in this paper aims at investigating user interaction in immersive virtual learning environments (VLEs), focusing on the role and the effect of interactivity on conceptual learning. The goal has been to examine if the learning of young users improves through interacting in (i.e. exploring, reacting to, and acting upon) an immersive virtual environment (VE) compared to non interactive or non-immersive environments. Empirical work was carried out with more than 55 primary school students between the ages of 8 and 12, in different between-group experiments: an exploratory study, a pilot study, and a large-scale experiment. The latter was conducted in a virtual environment designed to simulate a playground. In this ‘Virtual Playground’, each participant was asked to complete a set of tasks designed to address arithmetical ‘fractions’ problems. Three different conditions, two experimental virtual reality (VR) conditions and a non-VR condition, that varied the levels of activity and interactivity, were designed to evaluate how children accomplish the various tasks. Pre-tests, post-tests, interviews, video, audio, and log files were collected for each participant, and analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. This paper presents a selection of case studies extracted from the qualitative analysis, which illustrate the variety of approaches taken by children in the VEs in response to visual cues and system feedback. Results suggest that the fully interactive VE aided children in problem solving but did not provide as strong evidence of conceptual change as expected; rather, it was the passive VR environment, where activity was guided by a virtual robot, that seemed to support student reflection and recall, leading to indications of conceptual change

Proceedings of the International Workshop on EuroPLOT Persuasive Technology for Learning, Education and Teaching (IWEPLET 2013)

"This book contains the proceedings of the International Workshop on EuroPLOT Persuasive Technology for Learning, Education and Teaching (IWEPLET) 2013 which was held on 16.-17.September 2013 in Paphos (Cyprus) in conjunction with the EC-TEL conference. The workshop and hence the proceedings are divided in two parts: on Day 1 the EuroPLOT project and its results are introduced, with papers about the specific case studies and their evaluation. On Day 2, peer-reviewed papers are presented which address specific topics and issues going beyond the EuroPLOT scope. This workshop is one of the deliverables (D 2.6) of the EuroPLOT project, which has been funded from November 2010 – October 2013 by the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) of the European Commission through the Lifelong Learning Programme (LLL) by grant #511633. The purpose of this project was to develop and evaluate Persuasive Learning Objects and Technologies (PLOTS), based on ideas of BJ Fogg. The purpose of this workshop is to summarize the findings obtained during this project and disseminate them to an interested audience. Furthermore, it shall foster discussions about the future of persuasive technology and design in the context of learning, education and teaching. The international community working in this area of research is relatively small. Nevertheless, we have received a number of high-quality submissions which went through a peer-review process before being selected for presentation and publication. We hope that the information found in this book is useful to the reader and that more interest in this novel approach of persuasive design for teaching/education/learning is stimulated. We are very grateful to the organisers of EC-TEL 2013 for allowing to host IWEPLET 2013 within their organisational facilities which helped us a lot in preparing this event. I am also very grateful to everyone in the EuroPLOT team for collaborating so effectively in these three years towards creating excellent outputs, and for being such a nice group with a very positive spirit also beyond work. And finally I would like to thank the EACEA for providing the financial resources for the EuroPLOT project and for being very helpful when needed. This funding made it possible to organise the IWEPLET workshop without charging a fee from the participants.

Learning Through Rich Environments

Research into games in education most frequently expresses itself in the form of noting that games interest and motivate, and that we might therefore find the learning process improved if we were to use games as a vehicle for the delivery of learning content. We do not wish to take this approach, but to analyse what it is that makes games interesting and motivating and apply this in the context of designing learning scenarios. Many papers propose taxonomies of game style and criteria for good game design, tending to list good ideas and observed issues, but meeting difficulties when trying to generalise. We review some of the more important contributions in the area, and distil these into models to help us understand what's involved by defining the concept of a “Rich Environment.” We conclude with an example of how these models may be applied to the design of a learning environment

Actual and Imagined Movement in BCI Gaming

Most research on Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) focuses\ud on developing ways of expression for disabled people who are\ud not able to communicate through other means. Recently it has been\ud shown that BCI can also be used in games to give users a richer experience\ud and new ways to interact with a computer or game console.\ud This paper describes research conducted to find out what the differences\ud are between using actual and imagined movement as modalities\ud in a BCI game. Results show that there are significant differences\ud in user experience and that actual movement is a more robust way of\ud communicating through a BCI