Procedural modeling historical buildings for serious games

[EN] In this paper we target the goal of obtaining detailed historical virtual buildings, like a castle or a city old town, through a methodology that facilitates their reconstruction. We allow having in a short time an approximation model that is flexible for being explored, analyzed and eventually modified. This is crucial for serious game development pipelines, whose objective is focused not only on accuracy and realism, but also on transmitting a sense of immersion to the player.[ES] En este trabajo apuntamos al objetivo de obtener edificios históricos virtuales con alto nivel de detalle, como por ejemplo un castillo o un barrio de una ciudad antigua, a través de una metodología que facilite su reconstrucción. Las herramientas que proponemos nos permiten obtener rápidamente un modelo aproximado y flexible para ser explorado, analizado o eventualmente modificado. Modelos con estas características son esenciales para el desarrollo en plataformas de juegos serios, cuyo objetivo fundamental se centra no sólo en la precisión y el realismo, sino también en transmitir una sensación de inmersión para el jugador.We would like to thank Adriana Desplans for help with the Carcassonne prototype. This work was partially funded with grant TIN2010-20590-C02-02 from Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Spain.Besuievsky, G.; Patow, G. (2013). Procedural modeling historical buildings for serious games. Virtual Archaeology Review. 4(9):160-166. https://doi.org/10.4995/var.2013.426816016649P. Müller, P. Wonka, S. Haegler, A. Ulmer, and L. Van Gool. Procedural modeling of buildings. ACM Trans. Graph., 25(3):614-623, 2006. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1141911.1141931P.Musialski, P. Wonka, D. Aliaga, M. Wimmer, L. van Gool and W. Purgathofer. A Survey of Urban Reconstruction. EUROGRAPHICS 2012 State of the Art ReportsS. Haegler, P.Mller and L. Van Gool. Procedural Modeling for Digital Cultural Heritage. EURASIP J. Image and Video Processing V 2009.R. Ridorsa, G. Patow, The skylineEngine System, in XX Congreso Español de Iinformàtica Gràfica, CEIG2010 (2010), pp. 207-216L. Krecklau, C. Manthei, L. Kobbelt. Procedural Interpolation of Historical City Maps. Vol. 31 (2012), Number 2G. Patow, User-Friendly Graph Editing for Procedural Buildings.IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, vol. 32, no. 2, Mar./Apr. 2012, pp. 66--75; http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/MCG.2010.104B.Watson, P. Müller, O. VERYOVKA, A.Filler., P. Wonka and C.Sexton. 2008. Procedural urban modeling in practice. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 28, 18-26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/MCG.2008.57CityEngine 2011. www.procedural.comG. Besuievsky and G. Patow, A Procedural Modelling Approach for Automatic Generation of LoD Building Models, Proceedings of the CISBAT 2011, pp. 993-998, Lausanne, Switzerland.O. Pueyo, G. Patow. Structuring Urban Data, Tech. Rep. IMA12-01-RR, Dept. IMA, Universitat de Girona (2012)S.Barroso, G.Patow. Recreación de estructuras arquitectónicas mediante modelaje

Integrating serious games in adaptive hypermedia applications for personalised learning experiences

Game-based approaches to learning are increasingly recognized for their potential to stimulate intrinsic motivation amongst learners. While a range of examples of effective serious games exist, creating high-fidelity content with which to populate games is resource-intensive task. To reduce this resource requirement, research is increasingly exploring means to reuse and repurpose existing games. Education has proven a popular application area for Adaptive Hypermedia (AH), as adaptation can offer enriched learning experiences. Whilst content has mainly been in the form of rich text, various efforts have been made to integrate serious games into AH. However, there is little in the way of effective integrated authoring and user modeling support. This paper explores avenues for effectively integrating serious games into AH. In particular, we consider authoring and user modeling aspects in addition to integration into run-time adaptation engines, thereby enabling authors to create AH that includes an adaptive game, thus going beyond mere selection of a suitable game and towards an approach with the capability to adapt and respond to the needs of learners and educators

Procedural and semantic modeling of virtual environments for serious games development

International audienceVirtual environments are useful tools for visualization, discovery as well as training. In serious or learning games contexts, 3D graphical worlds, interaction, navigation and immersion capabilities are needed to propel narration and emotion. Furthermore, they are key elements to materialize pedagogical content and to support knowledge transfer. Semantic modeling, serious game classification and gameplay component identification allow generating serious game scenarios linked to the 3D world modeling and interaction or animation capabilities

Authoring of adaptive serious games

Game-based approaches to learning are increasingly being recognized as having the potential to stimulate intrinsic motivation amongst learners. Whilst a range of examples of effective serious games exist, creating the high-fidelity content with which to populate a serious game is resource-intensive task. To reduce this resource requirement, research is increasingly exploring means to reuse and repurpose existing games and relevant sources of content. Education has proven a popular application area for Adaptive Hypermedia, as adaptation can offer enriched learning experiences to students. Whilst content to-date has mainly been in the form of rich text, various efforts have been made to integrate Serious Games into Adaptive Hypermedia via run-time adaptation engines. However, there is little in the way of effective integrated authoring and user modeling support for these efforts. This paper explores avenues for effectively integrating serious games into adaptive hypermedia. In particular, we consider authoring and user modeling aspects in addition to integration into run-time adaptation engines, thereby enabling authors to create Adaptive Hypermedia that includes an adaptive game, thus going beyond mere selection of a suitable game and towards an approach with the capability to adapt and respond to the needs of learners and educators

Open Source 3D Game Engines for Serious Games Modeling

In this chapter we will review some tools and open source Game Engines used for modeling of real scenarios in serious games for training. One of the typical uses of serious games (3D serious games) is specialized training in dangerous tasks or when the training is quite expensive. However, typical games use artificial scenarios, created by artists and created according to the restrictions imposed by the Game engine used. In our experience, some tasks require the use of a real scenario like a city, forest area, etc, and most of this information is available as Digital Terrain Models in Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The problem here is that GIS formats are not compatible with 3D formats used in Game engines. Then we have to solve the problem of convert the GIS format to a 3D format supported by the Game Engine

Randomly Generated 3D Environments for Serious Games

Abstract — This paper describes a variety of methods that can be used to create realistic, random 3D environments for serious games requiring real-time performance. These include the generation of terrain, vegetation and building structures. An interactive flight simulator has been created as proof of concept. An initial evaluation with two small samples of users (remote and hallway) revealed some usability issues but also showed that overall the flight simulator is enjoyable and appears realistic and believable. Keywords – serious games; 3D terrain modeling; computer graphics; flight simulator. I

Designing interactive virtual environments with feedback in health applications.

One of the most important factors to influence user experience in human-computer interaction is the user emotional reaction. Interactive environments including serious games that are responsive to user emotions improve their effectiveness and user satisfactions. Testing and training for user emotional competence is meaningful in healthcare field, which has motivated us to analyze immersive affective games using emotional feedbacks. In this dissertation, a systematic model of designing interactive environment is presented, which consists of three essential modules: affect modeling, affect recognition, and affect control. In order to collect data for analysis and construct these modules, a series of experiments were conducted using virtual reality (VR) to evoke user emotional reactions and monitoring the reactions by physiological data. The analysis results lead to the novel approach of a framework to design affective gaming in virtual reality, including the descriptions on the aspects of interaction mechanism, graph-based structure, and user modeling. Oculus Rift was used in the experiments to provide immersive virtual reality with affective scenarios, and a sample application was implemented as cross-platform VR physical training serious game for elderly people to demonstrate the essential parts of the framework. The measurements of playability and effectiveness are discussed. The introduced framework should be used as a guiding principle for designing affective VR serious games. Possible healthcare applications include emotion competence training, educational softwares, as well as therapy methods

Generating Computational Models for Serious Gaming

Westera, W. (2013, 25 October). Generating computational models for serious gaming. Presentation at the GALA Serious Gaming Conference, Paris, France.Many serious games include computational models that simulate dynamic systems. These models promote enhanced interaction and responsiveness. Under the social web paradigm more and more usable game authoring tools become available that enable prosumers to create their own games, but the inclusion of dynamic simulations remains a specialist’s job involving knowledge of mathematics, numerical modeling and programming. This presentation explains a methodology for specifying and running a specific subset of computational models without the need of bothering with mathematical equations. The methodology comprises a knowledge elicitation procedure for identifying and specifying the required model components, whereupon the mathematical model is automatically generated. The approach is based on the fact that many games focus on optimisation problems that are covered by a general class of linear programming models. The presentation thus sketches the principles of a creativity tool that removes barriers for harvesting the creative potential of teachers and students

Modeling Urban Spaces with Cubes: Building analogue serious games for collaborative planning

Games are popular as ever. Professionals from every field are trying to build their serious games, combining engaging playability with simulation and learning outcomes. Urban planning is no exception. However, materializing these games is no easy task. We propose a serious game development process to combine modern board game mechanisms with realistic urban maps, profiting from the simplicity, flexibility, and collaboration dynamics analogue games provide. For this, we tested two collaborative games with architecture students. Although different, the games have similar core mechanical and economic systems, modelling urban zones with hexagons and squares. The experience revealed some pitfalls to avoid in game-based planning practice and helped to define a development process for serious games for urban planning

SIMULATION OF AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS COLLABORATING IN INDUSTRIAL PLANTS FOR MULTIPLE TASKS

The autonomous systems are continuously extending their application fields and current advances in sensors and controls are enabling the possibility to operate also inside buildings and industrial plants. These new capabilities introduce challenges to be addressed in order to carry out new tasks and missions. This paper proposes advances in Modeling, interoperable Simulation and Serious Games devoted to support researches supporting autonomous system operations within Industrial Facilities