Terrain Database Correlation Assessment Using an Open Source Tool

Configuring networked simulators for training military teams in a distributed environment requires the usage of a set of terrain databases to represent the same training area. The results of simulation exercises can be degraded if the terrain databases are poorly correlated. A number of methodologies for determining the correlation between terrain databaHowever, there are few computational tools for this task and most of them were developed to address government needs, have limited availability, and handle specific digital formats. The goal of this paper is thus to present a novel open source tool developed as part of an academic research project.Comment: 12 pages, I/ITSEC 201

Virtual Experience Test: A Virtual Environment Evaluation Questionnaire

We present the development and evaluation of the Virtual Experience Test (VET). The VET is a survey instrument used to measure holistic virtual environment experiences based upon the five dimensions of experiential design: sensory, cognitive, affective, active, and relational. Experiential Design (ED) is a holistic approach to enhance presence in virtual environments that goes beyond existing presence theory (i.e. a focus on the sensory aspects of VE experiences) to include affective and cognitive factors. To evaluate the VET, 62 participants played the commercial video game Mirror\u27s Edge. After gameplay both the VET and the ITC-Sense of Presence Inventory (ITC-SOPI) were administered. A principal component analysis was performed on the VET and it was determined that the actual question clustering coincided with the proposed dimensions of experiential design. Furthermore, scores from the VET were shown to have a significant relationship with presence scores on the ITC-SOPI. The results of this research produced a validated measure of holistic experience that could be used to evaluate virtual environments. Furthermore, our experiment indicates that virtual environments utilizing holistic designs can result in significantly higher presence. ©2010 IEEE

Player/Avatar Body Relations in Multimodal Augmented Reality Games

Augmented reality research is finally moving towards multimodal experiences: more and more applications do not only include visuals, but also audio and even haptics. The purpose of multimodality in these applications can be to increase realism or to increase the amount or quality of communicated information. One particularly interesting and increasingly important application area is AR gaming, where the player can experience the virtual game integrated into the real environment and interact with it in a multimodal fashion. Currently, many games are set up such that the interaction is local (direct), however there are many cases in which remote (indirect) interaction will be useful or even necessary. In the latter case, the actions can be expressed through a virtual avatar, while the player's real body is also still perceivably present. The player then controls the motions and actions of the avatar, and receives multimodal feedback associated to the events occurring in the game. Can it be that the player starts to perceive the avatar as a (part of) him- or herself? Or does something even more intense take place? What are the benefits of this experience? The core of this research is to understand how multimodal perceptual configuration plays a role in the relation between a player and their in-game avatar