Virtual Characters and Virtual Environments Research Projects of

Virtual Characters and Virtual Environments Research Projects of the Virtual Environments Group February 27 th, 2004 Benjamin Lok

n Applications Driven n Combines: n Interactive Computer Graphics n Computer Vision n Human Computer Interaction

Virtual Experiences Group n Ph. D Students (2) n n n MS Students (1) n n Kyle Johnsen (B. S. UF) Cyrus Harrison (B. S. , M. S. (expected) UF) George Mora (B. S. UF) DAS Undergraduates (4) n n Sayed Hashimi (S) Andrew Joubert (S) John Samuelsen (S) Art Homs (J)

Overview n Computer generated characters and environments n n Amazing visuals and audio Interacting is limited! n Reduce applicability? n Goals: n n Aki from Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within Create new methods to interact Evaluate the effectiveness of these interaction methods Walking Experiment PIT - UNC

Life-Sized Virtual Characters n Virtual Characters as a way to interact with information If virtual characters are presented with an adequate level of realism, would people respond to them as they would to other people? n Effective Interaction n n Natural (> than keyboard and mouse) 3 D, Dynamic (augmentable) Effective Collaboration n n Non-verbal communication (60%) High impact?

Interaction n n Each participant in a communication has three stages: perception, cognition, and response Investigate: Display, perception, efficacy Thinking Virtual Character Responding Perceiving Interaction Perceiving Participant Responding Thinking

Projects underway n Interpersonal communication n n Teaching n n n Distributed acting rehearsal Medical Diagnosis Training transfer Future work: n Universal Access n n n Disabled Minorities Rural communities

Virtual Environments n n n Been around for almost 30 years # of systems in research labs > day to day use Why? n n Interaction with the virtual environment is too poor Everything is virtual isn’t necessarily good n n Example, change a light bulb Approach: n n n Real objects as interfaces to the virtual world Merge the real and virtual spaces Evaluate what VR is good for!

Projects underway n n n Getting real objects into VR to aid engineering design Collaboration w/ Mars Airplane (Langley Research Center) Get tools, parts, and other (possibly distributed) collaborators in a shared space

Videos of Task Having a hybrid environment provides substantial benefits in prototype design.

Merging real and virtual spaces

Avatars in VE n n n Most virtual environments do not provide an avatar (user self-representation) Why? Because tracking the human body is difficult. Solution: Use simple computer vision to track colored markers to generate an avatar

Locomotion in VR n Most common locomotion: n n n Use a ‘virtual walking’ metaphor. Does this reduce effectiveness? We can test this because of new wide-area tracking technologies.

VR Interaction n n Getting real objects into virtual environments How do you naturally interact with virtual objects?

Virtual Experiences Group n n n n 2 Ph. D students 1 MS 4 Undergraduates 15’x 10’ wide area tracker Virtual Research V 8 HMD 42” Plasma TV 4 data projectors 120” passive stereo display Collaboration with expertise in: • Virtual Reality • Digital Arts • Image Processing • Computational Geometry • Human Computer Interaction • Image Based Rendering