Author Archives: kponto

Project Pitches

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Pitches from Day 1

Jerry H
 Planting Music: Use gestures to cultivate music experiences

Hasti
Haunted Hotel: Create a frightening ghost based experience

Jerry C
Stainless Steel World:  Build worlds with real time realistic materials
Interior Spaces: Create realistic environments with emphasis on real time effects.

ChengCheng
Desert: Create a game like experience of surviving a desert
Under Water: Create the experience of “swimming with the fishes”

Kevin M
Kowloon Walled City: Create the experience of being in a strange location inspired by a real locale.

Dan
Street CAVE: Visualize google street view immersively for virtual tourism.
Wizard Duel: Be a wizard!

Nick P
Shipping Crates: Locate objects in the warehouse from the end of Raiders of the Lost Arc.
Magic Doors: Experience the door room from Monster’s Inc.

Nick H
Immersive Learning Environment: Create a static environment useful for teaching languages
Modeling WID Building: Create a accruate representation of the WID building
Scale Across the Universe: Create a visualization that is able to convey scale across a wide variety of objects
Historical Spaces: Explore spaces that we can no longer go to

Pitches from Day 2

Natalie
Portkey: Use objects to teleport to different environments like in Harry Potter

Lauren
Impossible Scaling Environment: Environments that change their scale as you enter them

Russel
Mountain Resort:  Escape a mountain resort by skiing down a mountain

Reading 7

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For class 3/12/13
Post Comments by 11:59 PM on 3/10/13

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

Note: This article requires you to be on campus. You can log into sight with your netid through this link: http://sfx.wisconsin.edu/wisc?sid=google&auinit=T&aulast=Marsh&atitle=Serious+games+continuum:+Between+games+for+purpose+and+experiential+environments+for+purpose&title=Entertainment+computing&volume=2&issue=2&date=2011&spage=61&issn=1875-9521

Discussion:

Disney’s Aladdin: first steps toward storytelling in virtual reality (Pick 3)

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.

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?

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?

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?

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.

Serious games continuum: Between games for purpose and experiential environments for purpose

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?

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.

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?

 

Assignment 3

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Due for Class 3/12/13

This is assignment is to give a pitch for a project you would be interested in pursuing.  You will give a 5 minute presentation in class.  Things you should cover in your presentation:

  • What you are trying to do
  • Why you think this would be interesting
  • Things you think you know how to do
  • Things you don’t think you know how to do

After you finish the presentation we will open up for questions.  Pay attention to everyone  presentations.  After class I will have you email me:

  • Two to three projects you would be interested on working on
  • Projects you would definitely not want to work on

 Addition Info: I have had some questions about the specifics about what I am looking for.  Here is kind of an FAQ

How should I try to frame what I am pitching?

Think of trying to pitch an experience you would like to create.  For instance, “I want to create the experience of being in a sea battle with pirates.”  As an example, here are the project pages from the class from two years ago

http://graphics.cs.wisc.edu/WP/virtualreality11/2011/03/30/what-the-space-muffins-are-all-about/

http://graphics.cs.wisc.edu/WP/virtualreality11/2011/03/30/jc-project-desc/

http://graphics.cs.wisc.edu/WP/virtualreality11/2011/03/31/netcave-overview/

http://graphics.cs.wisc.edu/WP/virtualreality11/2011/03/30/the-galaxy-map-project/

Do I need to know how to do what I pitching?
At this stage we will work a very conceptual level.  Don’t worry if you have no idea of how to implement your idea.  That type of thinking will be for when we split up into teams.

How would the ideas of designing environments turn into an interesting project?
Here are some ideas that come to my mind.

Impossible Environments

In virtual reality we can make environments that aren’t physically possible.  What would it be like to experience something like the infinite staircase?

In virtual reality we can change ideas of scale.  What would it be like to be a very small or very large.

Environments that change as you interact with them.

Those are just a handful of ideas.  Please email if you would like to bounce ideas for projects.  Remember that this project pitch is not the final declaration of what you will be doing for the final project, that will be decided on a team by team basis.  At the end of the day the goal is to come up with cool project ideas and to have fun.

 

Reading 6

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For class 3/5/13
Post Comments by 11:59 PM on 3/3/13

Towards Virtual Reality for the Masses: 10 Years of Research at Disney’s VR Studio
Mark Mine
 http://www.dvschafer.com/files/disney_vr.pdf

Towards a model for a virtual reality experience: the virtual subjectiveness
N Parés, R Parés
http://www.dtic.upf.edu/~npares/publicacions/VR_Model_ParesPares_PresenceV15N5-2006.pdf

Discussion

Paper 1 (write a paragraph for each)

  1. For the listed systems choose three design decisions that you thought were wise.  Describe what issues you thought these decisions addressed.
  2. For the listed systems choose three design decisions that you thought were strange or misguided.  Describe you issues with the choices and what other approaches you think they could have taken.
  3. What jumped out to you from this paper?  This could be something you found interesting or curious.

Paper 2 (pick 3, write 1 paragraph for each)

  1. The authors present another view on virtual reality.  Compare and contrast this with one of the previous definitions we have looked at in class (or another view you have found externally).  How would you define VR?
  2. Do you agree with breakdown between MM and VR?  Why are why not? Do you agree that there is a continuum between the two?
  3. How do you feel about the idea of non 1:1 mappings of physical and virtual environments described on page 531?   Do you agree with the authors premise?  If so, in what kinds of applications could you foresee this being useful?  If not, in what kinds of problems do you foresee this type of mapping having?
  4. What do you think of the breakdown of VS?  Do you agree with the authors segmentation in Figure 10?  In what ways would you equate or differentiate it to the ideas of presence we have discussed in earlier classes?
  5. Do you agree with the authors that VS was far superior for “Pirates” over “Hercules”?  If not, describe why.  If you do, describe what “Hercules” could have done to better its VS
  6. Find a topic that you interesting, dubious, or curious and explain why.