A new navigation paradigm for virtual reality: the guided visit through a virtual world

The three main navigation paradigms for virtual worlds, i.e., free navigation, automatic tours, and multiuser navigation show important limitations when dealing with guided visits that involve interactive cooperation among several users in 3D virtual worlds over the Internet. In this paper, we present our research into this issue and some important results. We propose a new navigation paradigm denominated guided visit through a virtual world, where the capacity of a user guiding several remote users through the virtual world is enriched with the capacity to dynamically interchange the role of guiding between the connected users. The user that acts as a guide moves freely through the virtual world, and his/her movements are reproduced by the browsers of the other guided users. We also present the architecture and the system we developed that implements this paradigm, as well as its integration in a working realworld application that demonstrates its use

The Effects of Finger-Walking in Place (FWIP) on Spatial Knowledge Acquisition in Virtual Environments

Spatial knowledge, necessary for efficient navigation, comprises route knowledge (memory of landmarks along a route) and survey knowledge (overall representation like a map). Virtual environments (VEs) have been suggested as a power tool for understanding some issues associated with human navigation, such as spatial knowledge acquisition. The Finger-Walking-in-Place (FWIP) interaction technique is a locomotion technique for navigation tasks in immersive virtual environments (IVEs). The FWIP was designed to map a human’s embodied ability overlearned by natural walking for navigation, to finger-based interaction technique. Its implementation on Lemur and iPhone/iPod Touch devices was evaluated in our previous studies. In this paper, we present a comparative study of the joystick’s flying technique versus the FWIP. Our experiment results show that the FWIP results in better performance than the joystick’s flying for route knowledge acquisition in our maze navigation tasks

Towards Rapid Generation and Visualisation of Large 3D Urban Landscapes for Mobile Device Navigation

In this paper a procedural 3D modelling solution for mobile devices is presented based on scripting algorithms allowing for both the automatic and also semi-automatic creation of photorealistic quality virtual urban content. The combination of aerial images, GIS data, 2D ground maps and terrestrial photographs as input data coupled with a user-friendly customized interface permits the automatic and interactive generation of large-scale, accurate, georeferenced and fully-textured 3D virtual city content, content that can be specially optimized for use with mobile devices but also with navigational tasks in mind. Furthermore, a user-centred mobile virtual reality (VR) visualisation and interaction tool operating on PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) for pedestrian navigation is also discussed. Via this engine, the import and display of various navigational file formats (2D and 3D) is supported, including a comprehensive front-end user-friendly graphical user interface providing immersive virtual 3D navigation

Dialogues with a talking face for web-based services and transactions

In this paper we discuss our research on interactions in a virtual theatre that has been built using VRML and therefore can be accessed through Web pages. In\ud the virtual environment we employ several agents. The virtual theatre allows navigation input through keyboard and mouse, but there is also a navigation\ud agent which listens to typed input and spoken commands. Feedback of the system is given using speech synthesis. We also have an information agent which allows a natural language dialogue with the system where the input is keyboard-driven and the output is both with tables as with template driven natural language generation. In development are several talking faces for the different agents in the virtual world. At this moment an avatar with a cartoon-like talking face driven by a text-to-speech synthesizer can provide users with information about performances in the theatre

Navigation: am I really lost or virtually there?

Data is presented from virtual environment (VE) navigation studies that used building- and chessboard-type layouts. Participants learned by repeated navigation, spending several hours in each environment. While some participants quickly learned to navigate efficiently, others remained almost totally disoriented. In the virtual buildings this disorientation was illustrated by mean direction estimate errors of approximately 90°, and in the chessboard VEs disorientation was highlighted by the large number of rooms that some participants visited. Part of the cause of disorientation, and generally slow spatial learning, lies in the difficulty participants had learning the paths they had followed through the VEs

Virtual Reference for Video Collections: System Infrastructure, User Interface and Pilot User Study

A new video-based Virtual Reference (VR) tool called VideoHelp was designed and developed to support video navigation escorting, a function that enables librarians to co-navigate a digital video with patrons in the web-based environment. A client/server infrastructure was adopted for the VideoHelp system and timestamps were used to achieve the video synchronization between the librarians and patrons. A pilot usability study of using VideoHelp prototype in video seeking was conducted and the preliminary results demonstrated that the system is easy to learn and use, and real-time assistance from virtual librarians in video navigation is desirable on a conditional basis

Knowledge Building of 3D Geometry Concepts and Processes within a Virtual Reality Learning Environment

This paper reports on a pilot study for a prototype VRLE (Virtual Reality Learning Environment) named VRMath. The two primary school students who were involved in this study engaged in two VRMath learning activities designed by the researchers. The results indicated that 3D navigation within the VR 3D space was difficult. However, it could be aided with the navigation aids designed within VRMath. The 3D navigation within the 3D virtual space also caused the participants confusion in terms of their spatial visualisation and orientation abilities. The construction of 3D geometrical objects within VRMath was also difficult especially when the participants were operating the 3D rotation mentally and physically with respect to their body (i.e., the egocentric frame of reference). It was found that the simultaneously use of different frames of reference could help the construction of 3D geometrical objects. During the learning activities, issues about the usability of VRMath were also explored