Augmented reality meeting table: a novel multi-user interface for architectural design

Immersive virtual environments have received widespread attention as providing possible replacements for the media and systems that designers traditionally use, as well as, more generally, in providing support for collaborative work. Relatively little attention has been given to date however to the problem of how to merge immersive virtual environments into real world work settings, and so to add to the media at the disposal of the designer and the design team, rather than to replace it. In this paper we report on a research project in which optical see-through augmented reality displays have been developed together with prototype decision support software for architectural and urban design. We suggest that a critical characteristic of multi user augmented reality is its ability to generate visualisations from a first person perspective in which the scale of rendition of the design model follows many of the conventions that designers are used to. Different scales of model appear to allow designers to focus on different aspects of the design under consideration. Augmenting the scene with simulations of pedestrian movement appears to assist both in scale recognition, and in moving from a first person to a third person understanding of the design. This research project is funded by the European Commission IST program (IST-2000-28559)

Could the Player’s Engagement in a Video Game Increase His/Her Interest in Science?

International audienceOur work is to analyze how the practice of chosen video games may influence the player's interest. A set of video games was selected by a group of experts according to their qualities as games and their relations with scientific knowledge. A focus test experiment has been set up to evaluate the correlation between teenagers engagement and their interest in scientific domains. The analysis of the results shows that the desire to pursue the game and the sentiment of responsibility has, respectively, a direct and an indirect influence on the player's scientific interest. Considering that interest is known to be an important motivational factor in learning, these results have important implications for the serious games design. 1 Introduction The present study is a part of the project, Recensement /INMEDIATS 1 , which main goals are to understand the relationship between digital entertainment and the interest in scientific knowledge. Our work is to analyze how the practice of chosen video games may influence the player's interest. Interest is defined to be an emotional and motivational variable [1]. Furthermore, it has been established that the student's personal, situational and topic interest influence positively his/her learning outcomes [2,3]. Finally, in cognitive science, interest is considered to be very closely associated to a person's engagement in a given cognitive activity [4]. Engagement is associated with sensations such as immersion or, even more so, presence: Essentially, the sensation to "be there" [5,6,7]. In particular, Brockmyer & al. establish the relation between engagement and emotions, as fear, in their game engagement questionnaire. Furthermore, some theoretical video game studies observed that emotion can be considered as a component of engagement [8,9]. On the 1 Recensement/INMEDIATS is partly funded by the Government agency ANRU with Universcience, CNAM, the University of Paris 8 as partners