This week I placed more coins, improved the quality of particle systems, made the skis turn in the direction of the user’s motion, and created some more models. I made a gingerbread man, a penguin, and a poinsettia model and placed some of each throughout the course. Right now, I’m planning on having the penguins walk around as moving obstacles, but as of now they just spin in place as the terrain has irregular heights and I’m not yet sure how to deal with that. I also added fireworks at the end of the hill to make the bottom of the hill look cooler. I attempted to make the snow globally distributed, but this resulted in the user skiing too fast for the snow to catch up. I’m not sure if it is possible to make the snow global and look realistic given the user’s top speed, but I will continue to investigate.

Here are some screenshots:

For next week, I will finish adding coins to the hill, work on getting the penguins to walk around, look into the global snow effect, add boundaries to the hill, and maybe make more models. Some models I might make are light posts, christmas lights, candles, and better looking houses at the bottom of the hill. I might also add some spinning hoops to jump through.

This week I focused on finishing the toy soldiers and adding them to the simulator. I also made some simple building models and textures for the bottom of the hill. I added some large snowmen models near the candy cane tunnels and some particle systems in the candy cane forest.

Here is a screenshot of the toy soldiers:

For next week I will look into making the snow globally oriented, having the skis turn in the direction of the user, placing some coins throughout the track now that the terrain is finished, and maybe add some moving obstacles and other models.

This week I worked on generating some plots for the research paper. I created some bootstrap confidence intervals for all 7 questions in the survey and also made a scatterplot matrix to potentially show correlations in certain user’s responses. I also worked on adding particle systems and textures to the fireplace in the holiday demo. And I finished adding trees throughout the map.

Here is a screenshot of the changes:

For next week I will look into adding some obstacles like snowmen, toy soldiers, and animated obstacles (maybe snowballs or toy trains or something). I am currently in the process of texturing a model for the toy soldiers, so hopefully that will be good to go by next week.

This week I found a few sources for the research paper. One source was particularly relevant since it was a study on the relation between motor skills and a different ski simulator design. I also added a few more tunnels to the holiday demo. I chose not to do the heightmap I mentioned last week as the mountain seemed pretty good after a little bit more smoothing. Also, as a potential solution to the impostor issues, I thought of possibly adding fences to keep the user from getting too close to the impostors and have the impostors draw all the time, that way we would avoid any shader issues.

Here is a screenshot of the tunnels I added:

For next week I will work on adding/editing the research paper and possibly adding some statistical analysis to the report. I might look into making bootstrap confidence intervals for each of the observations. Also, I might make some more models/obstacles for the holiday demo.