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Sketch, click, plug and play: accelerated design of virtual environments by integrating multimedia and sketch content into game engines

Published: 08 July 2010 Publication History

Abstract

Virtual Environments are becoming increasingly popular outside the area of entertainment and are now used for a diverse range of applications such as education, training, simulation, urban design, architecture and archaeology. One of the main challenges of using virtual environments is the high cost of creating content. While there is a large variety of modelling tools available, they all require training, usually have a steep learning curve, and even simple structures can take hours or days to model depending on the required level of detail and the user's experience. In order to make virtual environments more accessible to a wider group of users the content creation step needs to be simplified.
In this paper we present a framework for effectively and efficiently creating virtual environments by integrating different media such as high resolution images and QuickTime VR movies into game engines. Terrains and simple 3D content are modelled using sketch and paint-like interfaces. The QuickTime VR movies are "fused" into the game engine environment providing a context-and-focus view of different aspects of the scene.
We demonstrate the usefulness of our approach by creating an archaeological virtual environment. The representation is much easier to create than a detailed fully 3D environment. However, it provides multiple advantages over traditional media for study and exploration, e.g., collaboration, overview and detail views, and improved perception of spatial and temporal relationships which is essential for understanding the usage of an archaeological site.
Preliminary user studies indicate that the tool considerable facilitates the creation of virtual environments. Compared to traditional 3D worlds our environments are simpler, but due to the integration of existing multimedia content they provide a similar amount of information for exploring and understanding the simulated scene. The QuickTime VR integration is virtually seamless and together with the context provided by the 3D environment allows similar types of navigation as for environments modelled entirely in 3D.

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  • (2019)Cultural Heritage and Communication through Simulation Videogames—A Validation of MinecraftHeritage10.3390/heritage20301382:3(2262-2274)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2019
  • (2017)Training Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality Prototyping without CodingProceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3027063.3053191(2646-2651)Online publication date: 6-May-2017
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cover image ACM Other conferences
CHINZ '10: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference of the NZ Chapter of the ACM Special Interest Group on Human-Computer Interaction
July 2010
95 pages
ISBN:9781450301046
DOI:10.1145/1832838
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 08 July 2010

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Author Tags

  1. QuickTime VR
  2. game engines
  3. rapid prototyping
  4. sketch-based modelling
  5. virtual environments

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Overall Acceptance Rate 8 of 23 submissions, 35%

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  • (2024)Generative Terrain Authoring with Mid-air Hand Sketching in Virtual RealityProceedings of the 30th ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology10.1145/3641825.3687736(1-10)Online publication date: 9-Oct-2024
  • (2019)Cultural Heritage and Communication through Simulation Videogames—A Validation of MinecraftHeritage10.3390/heritage20301382:3(2262-2274)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2019
  • (2017)Training Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality Prototyping without CodingProceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3027063.3053191(2646-2651)Online publication date: 6-May-2017
  • (2014)Automatic terrain generation with a sketching toolMultimedia Tools and Applications10.1007/s11042-012-1214-x70:3(1957-1986)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2014
  • (2011)Sketch-based crowd modellingProceedings of the Twelfth Australasian User Interface Conference - Volume 11710.5555/2460616.2460624(67-76)Online publication date: 17-Jan-2011

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