Monthly Archives: April 2014

RRCP 4/25

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RRPCFri2b RRPCFri3b

Rapid Room Color Prototyping 4/25

Caroline: Worked collectively in 3DS Max to implement lighting into the room. Was instrumental in pushing forward the IRB-which is on its way to being completed soon.

Soheyla: Used prior knowledge of 3DS Max to implement lighting into the room.

Olivia: Finished modeling the virtual room in Sketch Up, and exported to 3DS Max for lighting. Tried to help with lighting.

Accomplishments: This week, we made great strides by solidifying the fundamentals of our experiment i.e. room design/modeling. As a group, we worked together in wording the experiment in the IRB, and incorporating lighting and color into the models.

Problems: The main thing we need to make sure of is that the rooms have realistic lighting with correct coloring-this will take some tweaking in 3DS Max to produce our different colored rooms at different saturations.

Schedule: We are feeling ok on where we are right now. There are elements of the experiment that definitely need to be finalized, but we know what those are and are working through those details.

Next week: Submit IRB, complete all of the room prototypes with lighting, have survey complete, mock experiment/test all of the rooms

Music Team 4/25

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IMG_3684

 

Simon: This week I coded some new shapes into the virtual environment and worked on different ways to change the colors and shapes. I also investigated some ways to use OpenAL in our program.

Tim: This week I have been trying to find a way to export data from a spectrogram of the song into a CSV. However I haven’t been able to find anything on the currentprogram that I am using. I tried unsuccessfully to find another program for the job. Next week I plan on finding more information about sonic visualizer and other
music analyzation software.

Chelsi: Chelsi is gone this week but is researching what type of sound system to get for our experiment. She also got some good background footage to use and is getting more this week.

Accomplishments this week: This week we implemented some more prototype environments and did color testing. Additionally, we tested some more music analysis features and decided on how we want to play recorded video in the environment.

Problems: The methods we have found for music analysis so far don’t really work. We still need to find a good program to use.

Schedule: We are behind schedule because the music features have yet to be implemented. All the other major parts of our program are mostly working.

Next week: Implement recorded video and some form of music analysis.

Vex 4/25

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This week:
Cory – Looked into programming NPC behavior.
Giang – Brainstorming gamemode ideas to branch the game into.
Jacob – Brainstorming gamemode ideas to branch the game into.

Accomplishments:
We changed what kind of game we’ll be making. We came up with several game ideas, and we expect to be able to implement many of them.

  •  Zombie Co-op survival mode
    • Defend each other
    • Look for and collect weapons and ammo
    • Work toward a specific location
  • Reverse Turing Test with NPCs
    • Trying to kill other real humans
    • Get NPCs to fight each other
    • NPCs are reactive to attacks and other actions
    • Body swaps
  • Player vs player armies
    • Recruit NPCs to your army
    • Take out the other army

Problems:
Garry’s Mod documentation isn’t the greatest. Often have to test things to see what certain functions do.

Still on schedule?
We’ve changed exactly what we’ll be doing, so the schedule is a little off. However, we think we’ll have things ready in time still.

Plans for next week:
Cory – More NPC interactions. Specifically, programmed walking around and using items. Also, looking into the multiplayer issues.
Ghiang – Look into goal conditions trying to locate a platform to get to
Jacob – Look into placing items or having NPCs drop items

Reading 11

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For class 4/28/14
Post Comments by 11:59 pm on 4/27/14

Questioning naturalism in 3D user interfaces
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2330687
By Doug A. Bowman, Ryan P . McMahan, and Eric D. Ragan
Communications of the ACM 2012 vol. 55 (9)

or get it from box
https://uwmadison.box.com/s/2umddpaksotblcd1o722

As this will be our last reading for the semester we will have a free form discussion.  Write at least 4 paragraphs on the article.  You can discuss points of interest, questions you have, related work, and anything else related to the article. You can also think about position key points made in this article to discussions we have had throughout the semester.

Links from Andy Wilson 3DUI Keynote

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Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Xv6FnM1SrE

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xujhFInvyxo

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz17lbjOFn8

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhvrOkaDxAY

Room Alive

http://readwrite.com/2012/08/14/microsoft-kinect-research-project-lets-anyone-bring-household-objects-alive#awesm=~ozUqz8VJnLQU5J

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHL5tJ9ja_w

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sazLd-pgpGc

RRCP April 18

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Photo of Joy Dohr.

This week we made great progress on finalizing our study design. Soheyla consulted with a research design expert and was able to get good feedback on how we should set up the study. Caroline consulted with a color theory expert and got many resources to help us pick out our test colors. She also tested the emotive more and thinks it won’t fit the scope of this project. Olivia continued work on preparing the rooms in Sketchup.

Problems encountered included realizing we needed to switch technologies from the cave to the Discovery system in order to get the requisite number of people, and needing to use 3DS Max for proper color saturation display.

The project is on schedule, but have to adjust our schedule up in order to leverage the people at the fashion show.

This next week we will finish the room modeling, finalize the study design details, and hopefully test the system on ourselves.

 

  • One piece of media related to your work (image, video, audio, etc)
  • What each individual in the group worked on over the last week
  • A description of the accomplishments made
  • A description of the problems encountered
  • An analysis whether or not the project is still on schedule
  • Plans for the upcoming week

Music Visual

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Graphics on Screen

This week:

Simon: Mostly I just researched how to best implement timing for beat-detection and other things like that. I also did some more testing on what we already have in place. There’s still some issues that I’m not sure how to fix, like the 3D and the keyboard input, but I think the plan we have in place is on the right track.

Tim:  I am still trying to figure out what to analyze, aka take actually useful information from the song to visualize.

Chelsi: Working on rendering video for the background. Attempting to become familiar with OpenGL and find code that allows us to render a real time video. I’ll be at a music festival next week where I plan to get actual footage (lazers, lights, etc.) that will go along cohesively with what we are building

Overall we have the sphere moving and the ability to change the shapes and color. We are looking at what the best way to analyze the music is (BPM, frequency, etc.) for simplicity and effectiveness. Simon has prepared the sphere for music data, so that it is ready to adapt according to that.

By next week we hope to have the music analyzation decided. We are pretty much on track from our first plan and essentially half way done.

Vex 4/17

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This week:
Cory – Set up a git repo to work in. Created the initial gamemode that we will build off of. Added some weapons to the only player to test game details. Started looking into how multiplayer works with Garry’s mod.
Giang – Started to look into how to add NPCs (non-player characters) into the gamemode.
Jacob – Started to look into how to create interactive portal zones in our maps.

Accomplishments:
We were able to set up the very basic backbone of the game.

Problems:
Multiplayer did not appear to work immediately for our gamemode. It looks like we may need to do some sort of port forwarding or other configuration to allow creating and accessing new servers.

Still on schedule?
We’re a little behind schedule. We were not able to get very much done this week.

Plans for next week:
Finish creating the basic set up and rules for the RunnerGunner gamemode

Reading 10

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For class 4/21/14
Post Comments by 11:59 pm on 4/20/14

Disney’s Aladdin: first steps toward storytelling in virtual reality
Randy Pausch, Jon Snoddy, Robert Taylor, Scott Watson, Eric Haseltine
http://ivizlab.sfu.ca/arya/Papers/ACM/SIGGRAPH-96/Storytelling%20in%20VR.pdf

Serious games continuum: Between games for purpose and experiential environments for purpose
Tim Marsh
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1875952110000224

or here on box

https://uwmadison.box.com/s/mpw7kwntw2b29h8p6och

Discussion Article 1 (Pick 3)

  1. Do you feel like storytelling in VR has evolved to the author’s hope?  If why, what do you think has slowed it’s growth.  If yes, descibe examples that you think show this evolution.
  2. Are you surprised by the lack of head rotation?  What did you think contributed most to this result?  Would you expect the same type of head rotation profile in the CAVE?
  3. Which of the general observations do you find most useful for trying to design a project?  In what ways could you use this insight for your project?
  4. In the survey, pick either a result the you found interesting or a question you found curious and briefly discuss.  Do you think it made sense to present the results grouped by gender?
  5. Do you feel like the research challenges are still relevant or have been solved?  Choose one of the  challenges that you think would be interesting to try to explore.  Discuss one idea of how you might start to attempt to undertake this challenge.

Discussion Article 2 (Pick 3)

  1. Do you agree with the author’s definition of serious games (p 63)?  Do you agree with the continuum on Figure 1?  Can something be a game and have no gaming characteristics for experience?
  2. Choose one of the examples listed in section 3.x.  Find and list a  video or external reference for the example.  Discuss how you would position this example on the continuum.
  3. Do you agree with the author’s discussion point that serious gaming is a form of cost-effective VR?  Do you think all of VR could be considered a form of serious gaming?
  4. Define and discuss the term ‘games’.  Discuss how your definition agrees or contradicts this article
  5. You may find a term or topic that you are unfamiliar with.  If you would like to, do a little research on the subject (wikipedia would be a good place to start). Briefly describe your understanding of this concept and how confident you are about this understanding.