A Framework for Supporting Immersion in Commodity Gaming

Presented here is a case for a higher level ofengagement and immersion in gaming by proposing gamingsoftware support for displays that engage the players peripheralvision. It is widely accepted that the sense of “being there” or“presence” is heightened by “removing the frame”, that is, fillingthe viewers field of view with a virtual environment. Except for afew special cases this is almost entirely unsupported in currentcommodity games, and yet the importance is readily accepted asis illustrated by the widespread use in commercial simulators andvirtual reality environments. This paper will present the generalrequirements necessary to support a range of seamless immersivedisplays, that is, displays that engage a significant portion, if notall, of the users field of view. It will further outline a softwarepipeline split into two parts, a generic section that generates thenecessary visual information followed by a section that handlesthe device/display specific details.Part of the motivation stems from the realisation that there aremany possible hardware configurations for immersive displaysand it would be too high a burden on the software developer tosupport them all. Equally the installation supplier does not haveaccess to the underlying software engine or source code. Theproposed solution then is to separate the problem into two pieces,those that are the responsibility of the software developer andthose that are the responsibility of the display provider

Errors in the shielding effectiveness of cavities due to stair-cased meshing in FDTD: Application of empirical correction factors

The errors, due to stair-cased meshing, in the Shielding Effectiveness (SE) of cavities modelled with thin boundaries, in the Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) method, are examined. The errors in SE are found to be associated with the error in the surface area of the cavity caused by the use of a stair-cased mesh. An empirical solution is demonstrated, which improves the stair-cased model accuracy to be comparable to that achievable by a conformal model. Errors in the resonant frequencies ,Q factors and field minima of a cavity, due to the stair-cased mesh, are also noted

THE APPLICATION OF A SPORT-SPECIFIC 3D STEREOSCOPIC STIMULUS TO EXAMINE PRE-PLANNING TIME AND GAZE CHARACTERISTICS DURING EVASIVE SIDE-STEPPING MANOEUVRES

It is well established that anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries are serious, debilitating and costly for an individual, while also creating a significant public health burden at a societal level. ACL injuries occur when inappropriate external loads are applied to the knee and most commonly occur during the performance of a side-stepping (Ssg) manoeuvre (Besier et al., 2001a). Previous laboratory based investigations of evasive Ssg have employed generic light or mannequin visual stimuli in an effort to simulate the time and space constraints experienced by athletes, in the preparation and execution of the Ssg manoeuvre (Besier et al., 2001b; Besier et al., 2003; Mclean et al., 2004). However, a possible outcome of attempts to impose these constraints in lab environments is that the use of unrealistic visual stimuli may not accurately reflect or identify the relationship of the perceptual demands of the task with injury risk variables, during a sidestep in game based situations. This study proposes that the presentation of a three dimensional (3D) stereoscopic stimulus (3DSS), featuring a 3D video based sport specific reconstruction of an opposing defender(s) simulating a tackle, may improve the ecological validity of laboratory based investigations. Additionally, the incorporation of the 3DSS tool with eye tracking will allow for the subject’s gaze characteristics (fixations, durations on the 3DSS image) to be assessed. The general aims of this study were to: Technical • develop a 3DSS that delivers realistic sport-specific constraints to footballers during evasive Ssg manoeuvres, • create 3DSS scenarios that incorporate realistic game based variations of imposed time and space constraints (e.g. 3DSS tackle scenarios with one or two defenders), • develop an interface and protocol that integrates the 3DSS system with a commercial eye tracking system (ASL Eye Tracking Recorder), for the purpose of quantifying the lab based subject’s gaze characteristics on the projected stimulus during a Ssg manoeuvre, Experimental • identify differences in biomechanical variables (kinematic, kinetic and neuromuscular) associated with increased injury risk during Ssg manoeuvres, using a traditional light (light emitting diode) based stimulus (LBSS) compared with a 3DSS stimuli

How is rape a weapon of war?: feminist international relations, modes of critical explanation and the study of wartime sexual violence

Rape is a weapon of war. Establishing this now common claim has been an achievement of feminist scholarship and activism and reveals wartime sexual violence as a social act marked by gendered power. But the consensus that rape is a weapon of war obscures important, and frequently unacknowledged, differences in ways of understanding and explaining it. This article opens these differences to analysis. Drawing on recent debates regarding the philosophy of social science in IR and social theory, it interprets feminist accounts of wartime sexual violence in terms of modes of critical explanation – expansive styles of reasoning that foreground particular actors, mechanisms, reasons and stories in the formulation of research. The idea of a mode of critical explanation is expanded upon through a discussion of the role of three elements (analytical wagers, narrative scripts and normative orientations) which accomplish the theoretical work of modes. Substantive feminist accounts of wartime sexual violence are then differentiated in terms of three modes – of instrumentality, unreason and mythology – which implicitly structure different understandings of how rape might be a weapon of war. These modes shape political and ethical projects and so impact not only on questions of scholarly content but also on the ways in which we attempt to mitigate and abolish war rape. Thinking in terms of feminist modes of critical explanation consequently encourages further work in an unfolding research agenda. It clarifes the ways in which an apparently commonality of position can conceal meaningful disagreements about human action. Exposing these disagreements opens up new possibilities for the analysis of war rape

SEASONALITY OF BIRD STRIKES: TOWARDS A BEHAVIOURAL EXPLANATION

It is well known that, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, there is a strong seasonal element in the annual pattern of bird strikes. This study undertakes a statistical analysis of an 11year data set collected at Dublin Airport, Ireland. It attempts to identify statistically significant trends in the seasonal trajectories of bird strikes, both in general and in respect of individual species and in comparison with seasonal trends in the abundance of birds generally and at Dublin Airport in particular. Hypotheses relating to the idea of “open” (i.e. intervals of through-put of naïve and young birds) and “closed” (i.e. intervals when throughput is declining or at a minimum) periods are tested. The results are discussed in the context of the probable ability of birds to learn to avoid aircraft. If birds possess a spatio-temporal memory then it is likely that this ability, or the lack of it, may explain some of the observed trends in the seasonal distribution of bird strikes

On the effectiveness of mixing in violent relaxation

Relaxation processes in collisionless dynamics lead to peculiar behavior in systems with long-range interactions such as self-gravitating systems, non-neutral plasmas and wave-particle systems. These systems, adequately described by the Vlasov equation, present quasi-stationary states (QSS), i.e. long lasting intermediate stages of the dynamics that occur after a short significant evolution called "violent relaxation". The nature of the relaxation, in the absence of collisions, is not yet fully understood. We demonstrate in this article the occurrence of stretching and folding behavior in numerical simulations of the Vlasov equation, providing a plausible relaxation mechanism that brings the system from its initial condition into the QSS regime. Area-preserving discrete-time maps with a mean-field coupling term are found to display a similar behaviour in phase space as the Vlasov system.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figure

Influence of hand position on the near-effect in 3D attention

Voluntary reorienting of attention in real depth situations is characterized by an attentional bias to locations near the viewer once attention is deployed to a spatially cued object in depth. Previously this effect (initially referred to as the ‘near-effect’) was attributed to access of a 3D viewer-centred spatial representation for guiding attention in 3D space. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the near-bias could have been associated with the position of the response-hand, always near the viewer in previous studies investigating endogenous attentional shifts in real depth. In Experiment 1, the response-hand was placed at either the near or far target depth in a depth cueing task. Placing the response-hand at the far target depth abolished the near-effect, but failed to bias spatial attention to the far location. Experiment 2 showed that the response-hand effect was not modulated by the presence of an additional passive hand, whereas Experiment 3 confirmed that attentional prioritization of the passive hand was not masked by the influence of the responding hand on spatial attention in Experiment 2. The pattern of results is most consistent with the idea that response preparation can modulate spatial attention within a 3D viewer-centred spatial representation

A VLA search for young protostars embedded in dense cores

Four dense cores, L1582A, L1689A, B133 and B68, classified as prestellar in terms of the absence of detectable NIR emission, are observed at radio wavelengths to investigate whether they nurture very young protostars. No definite young protostars were discovered in any of the four cores observed. A few radio sources were discovered close to the observed cores, but these are most likely extragalactic sources or YSOs unrelated to the cores observed. In L1582A we discovered a weak radio source near the centre of the core with radio characteristics and offset from the peak of the submillimeter emission similar to that of the newly discovered protostar in the core L1014, indicating a possible protostellar nature for this source. This needs to be confirmed with near- and/or mid-infrared observations (e.g. with Spitzer). Hence based on the current observations we are unable to confirm unequivocally that L1582A is starless. In L1689A a possible 4.5-sigma radio source was discovered at the centre of the core, but needs to be confirmed with future observations. In B133 a weak radio source, possibly a protostar, was discovered at the edge of the core on a local peak of the core submm emission, but no source was detected at the centre of the core. Thus, B133 is probably starless, but may have a protostar at its edge. In B68 no radio sources were discovered inside or at the edge of the core, and thus B68 is indeed starless. Four more radio sources with spectral indices characteristic of young protostars were discovered outside the cores but within the extended clouds in which these cores reside. Conclusions: We conclude that the number of cores misclassified as prestellar is probably very small and does not significantly alter the estimated lifetime of the prestellar phase.Comment: Accepted by A&

On the Identification of High Mass Star Forming Regions using IRAS: Contamination by Low-Mass Protostars

We present the results of a survey of a small sample (14) of low-mass protostars (L_IR < 10^3 Lsun) for 6.7 GHz methanol maser emission performed using the ATNF Parkes radio telescope. No new masers were discovered. We find that the lower luminosity limit for maser emission is near 10^3 Lsun, by comparison of the sources in our sample with previously detected methanol maser sources. We examine the IRAS properties of our sample and compare them with sources previously observed for methanol maser emission, almost all of which satisfy the Wood & Churchwell criterion for selecting candidate UCHII regions. We find that about half of our sample satisfy this criterion, and in addition almost all of this subgroup have integrated fluxes between 25 and 60 microns that are similar to sources with detectable methanol maser emission. By identifying a number of low-mass protostars in this work and from the literature that satisfy the Wood & Churchwell criterion for candidate UCHII regions, we show conclusively for the first time that the fainter flux end of their sample is contaminated by lower-mass non-ionizing sources, confirming the suggestion by van der Walt and Ramesh & Sridharan.Comment: 8 pages with 2 figures. Accepted by Ap