Exploring heritage through time and space : Supporting community reflection on the highland clearances

On the two hundredth anniversary of the Kildonan clearances, when people were forcibly removed from their homes, the Timespan Heritage centre has created a program of community centred work aimed at challenging pre conceptions and encouraging reflection on this important historical process. This paper explores the innovative ways in which virtual world technology has facilitated community engagement, enhanced visualisation and encouraged reflection as part of this program. An installation where users navigate through a reconstruction of pre clearance Caen township is controlled through natural gestures and presented on a 300 inch six megapixel screen. This environment allows users to experience the past in new ways. The platform has value as an effective way for an educator, artist or hobbyist to create large scale virtual environments using off the shelf hardware and open source software. The result is an exhibit that also serves as a platform for experimentation into innovative ways of community co-creation and co-curation.Postprin

Middleware services for distributed virtual environments

PhD ThesisDistributed Virtual Environments (DVEs) are virtual environments which allow dispersed users to interact with each other and the virtual world through the underlying network. Scalability is a major challenge in building a successful DVE, which is directly affected by the volume of message exchange. Different techniques have been deployed to reduce the volume of message exchange in order to support large numbers of simultaneous participants in a DVE. Interest management is a popular technique for filtering unnecessary message exchange between users. The rationale behind interest management is to resolve the "interests" of users and decide whether messages should be exchanged between them. There are three basic interest management approaches: region-based, aura-based and hybrid approaches. However, if the time taken for an interest management approach to determine interests is greater than the duration of the interaction, it is not possible to guarantee interactions will occur correctly or at all. This is termed the Missed Interaction Problem, which all existing interest management approaches are susceptible to. This thesis provides a new aura-based interest management approach, termed Predictive Interest management (PIM), to alleviate the missed interaction problem. PIM uses an enlarged aura to detect potential aura-intersections and iii initiate message exchange. It utilises variable message exchange frequencies, proportional to the intersection degree of the objects' expanded auras, to restrict bandwidth usage. This thesis provides an experimental system, the PIM system, which couples predictive interest management with the de-centralised server communication model. It utilises the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) middleware standard to provide an interoperable middleware for DVEs. Experimental results are provided to demonstrate that PIM provides a scalable interest management approach which alleviates the missed interaction problem

Middleware services for distributed virtual environments

PhD ThesisDistributed Virtual Environments (DVEs) are virtual environments which allow dispersed users to interact with each other and the virtual world through the underlying network. Scalability is a major challenge in building a successful DVE, which is directly affected by the volume of message exchange. Different techniques have been deployed to reduce the volume of message exchange in order to support large numbers of simultaneous participants in a DVE. Interest management is a popular technique for filtering unnecessary message exchange between users. The rationale behind interest management is to resolve the "interests" of users and decide whether messages should be exchanged between them. There are three basic interest management approaches: region-based, aura-based and hybrid approaches. However, if the time taken for an interest management approach to determine interests is greater than the duration of the interaction, it is not possible to guarantee interactions will occur correctly or at all. This is termed the Missed Interaction Problem, which all existing interest management approaches are susceptible to. This thesis provides a new aura-based interest management approach, termed Predictive Interest management (PIM), to alleviate the missed interaction problem. PIM uses an enlarged aura to detect potential aura-intersections and iii initiate message exchange. It utilises variable message exchange frequencies, proportional to the intersection degree of the objects' expanded auras, to restrict bandwidth usage. This thesis provides an experimental system, the PIM system, which couples predictive interest management with the de-centralised server communication model. It utilises the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) middleware standard to provide an interoperable middleware for DVEs. Experimental results are provided to demonstrate that PIM provides a scalable interest management approach which alleviates the missed interaction problem

Online Synchronous Model of Interpretive Sustainable Guiding in Heritage Sites: The Avatar Tourist Visit

[EN] The health crisis caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic created an unprecedented social situation. In the most critical moments, tourism activities were cancelled or reduced to their minimum operation, creating an extreme situation of separation of a country¿s heritage from residents and tourists. The objective of this work is to propose new options and strategies to reconnect the public with heritage under any circumstance and, at the same time, offer tourism services in healthy, secure conditions. Thus, live-streaming experiences of online interpretative tourist guidance were developed in heritage spaces; those visits were led by real guide-interpreters in a real environment and transmitted for remote visitors. We have called this visiting model the ¿Avatar Tourist Visit¿. It is based on tools associated with Heritage Interpretation, Interpersonal Communication, Filmmaking and Audio-Visual Language, and Information and Communication Technologies. The methodological development of this tool was based on Design Sciences Research as the creation of a new procedure was pursued. The result is a sustainable, immersive, interactive, inclusive, unique, and resilient tourism product designed not only for times of crisis but also to connect the public with heritage at all times and ensure universal access to it. In addition, this activity constitutes a marketable experience as a specialized and customizable tourist product.This study is part of the research project "Analisis y desarrollo de la integracion HBIM en SIG para la creacion de un protocolo de planificacion turistica del patrimonio cultural de un destino" (ref. PID2020-119088RB-I00), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation; and has also been funded by Generalitat Valenciana and Fondo Social Europeo through the postdoctoral program APOSTD/2020/004.Viñals Blasco, MJ.; Gilabert Sansalvador, L.; Sanasaryan, A.; Teruel Serrano, MD.; Darés, M. (2021). Online Synchronous Model of Interpretive Sustainable Guiding in Heritage Sites: The Avatar Tourist Visit. Sustainability. 13(13):1-18. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13137179118131

AMMP-EXTN: A User Privacy and Collaboration Control Framework for a Multi-User Collaboratory Virtual Reality System

In this thesis, we propose a new design of privacy and session control for improving a collaborative molecular modeling CVR system AMMP-VIS [1]. The design mainly addresses the issue of competing user interests and privacy protection coordination. Based on our investigation of AMMP-VIS, we propose a four-level access control structure for collaborative sessions and dynamic action priority specification for manipulations on shared molecular models. Our design allows a single user to participate in multiple simultaneous sessions. Moreover, a messaging system with text chatting and system broadcasting functionality is included. A 2D user interface [2] for easy command invocation is developed in Python. Two other key aspects of system implementation, the collaboration Central deployment and the 2D GUI for control are also discussed. Finally, we describe our system evaluation plan which is based on an improved cognitive walkthrough and heuristic evaluation as well as statistical usage data

Hierarchical Audio Structure For Online Collaboration

As online communication is increasingly used for collaborative purposes, it is important to rethink some of the audio and text-based chat environments currently in use today. Popular online video conferencing tools like Zoom and Skype, and text-based tools like Discord offer a sleuth of features and allow users to interact and exchange ideas freely. However, they may not be well suited for certain types of tasks, namely a virtual classroom with hierarchical breakrooms for focused discussions in virtual spaces. This thesis develops a hierarchical-based communication system that is conducive for the aforementioned tasks. The audio structure is built within a virtual environment and implemented using the Unity game engine and the Dissonance Voice Chat package. Users can navigate in the virtual space as avatars and have access to increasingly private audio and text chat channels called audio regions. Users can communicate exclusively on these audio regions but may hear communication at dimmed volumes on parent channels. This allows them to hear announcements from public channels while still retaining focus of discussion on private channels. We performed a comparative analysis of our audio structure with popular online communication tools like Zoom, Skype and Discord on two types of activities or games

The development and applications of serious games in the public services: defence and health

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University London.The latest advances of Virtual Reality technologies and three-dimensional graphics, as well as the developments in Gaming Technologies in the recent years, have stemmed the proliferation of Serious Games in a broader spectrum of research applications. Among the most popular areas of application are public services such as Defence and Health, where digital technologies realise new challenges and opportunities for research and development of Serious Games and for a variety of contexts. As with all games, the user engagement is elevated and apart from the entertaining aspect, Serious Games serve as a novel and promising alternative experience to knowledge transfer. Furthermore, Serious Games bring to the end user and the overall society a series of attractive benefits. These benefits include safety, cost-effectiveness, increased motivation and personalisation. Hence, this Thesis aims to investigate novel approaches of developing Serious Games that utilise the recent advances of Virtual Reality and Gaming Technology and facilitate the aforementioned benefits. The process of design and development of the novel tools and applications follow an iterative manner and are driven by the review of the available literature as well as end-user feedbackEPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council ) , MOD (UK), NHS (UK