Avatar as Content Delivery Platform (original) (raw)
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Beyond human, Avatar as multimedia expression
Virtual Storytelling. Using Virtual …, 2003
The Avatar, the representation of the user in three-dimensional chat environments, serves as a visual identifier for the user and through gestures / costumes acts as a means of expression for the user. The Avatar also serves as a point through which the user receives information and manipulates the environment. Abstracted into programming terminology, the Avatar is not a humanoid representation endowed with gestural expression, but a four dimensional point (3D & time) for data exchange. Accepting this abstraction of the Avatar opens the door to a world of simple, yet previously unthinkable, possibilities.
A Unified Framework for Individualized Avatar-Based Interactions
Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 2014
This paper presents a framework to interactively control avatars in remote environments. The system, called AMITIES, serves as the central component that connects people controlling avatars (inhabiters), various manifestations of these avatars (surrogates), and people interacting with these avatars (participants). A multiserver–client architecture, based on a low-demand network protocol, connects the participant environment(s), the inhabiter station(s), and the avatars. A human-in-the-loop metaphor provides an interface for remote operation, with support for multiple inhabiters, multiple avatars, and multiple participants. Custom animation blending routines and a gesture-based interface provide inhabiters with an intuitive avatar control paradigm. This gesture control is enhanced by genres of program-controlled behaviors that can be triggered by events or inhabiter choices for individual or groups of avatars. This mixed (agency and gesture-based) control paradigm reduces the cogniti...
Avatars as electronic transitional objects
Is there a connection between a furry teddy bear and a virtual reality avatar? Strangely, they may display similar properties in their relationships to children as they develop and grow.
Virtual 3D Learning Environments Using Avatars
Heated debates involving reforms in the educational system are becoming more and more frequent in recent years. This is due to the increasingly evident shortcomings in the educational system and its difficulties to evolve at the same pace as technological development. The aim of this work is to present an analysis of the current engineering educational context and propose an interactive content authoring system as well as a virtual professor in an attempt to make learning experience richer and more motivating to students.
Semi-Autonomous Avatars: A New Direction for Expressive User Embodiment
Computer animated characters are rapidly becoming a regular part of our lives. They are starting to take the place of actors in films and television and are now an integral part of most computer games. Perhaps most interestingly in on-line games and chat rooms they are representing the user visually in the form of avatars, becoming our on-line identities, our embodiments in a virtual world. Currently online environments such as “Second Life” are being taken up by people who would not traditionally have considered playing games before, largely due to a greater emphasis on social interaction. These environments require avatars that are more expressive and that can make on-line social interactions seem more like face-to-face conversations. Computer animated characters come in many different forms. Film characters require a substantial amount of off-line animator effort to achieve high levels of quality; these techniques are not suitable for real time applications and are not the focus ...
Avatar interoperability and control in virtual Worlds
Signal Processing: Image Communication, 2013
Virtual worlds (VWs), and especially the ones using 3D graphics content, have been massively developed and deployed over the last few years. Technological developments, both in hardware and software, bring up significant improvements in the areas of display, graphics, animation, distributed systems, network and mobile phones technology. These improvements allow almost every user on Web 2.0 to have a representation in different VWs. In those VWs, avatars have a specific place, representing a graphical appearance of human beings and a container for the users' specific data. Therefore, the need to reuse them across different VWs and across different platforms increases significantly. In this paper we are presenting a framework that allows interoperability of avatars between VWs. The proposed method consists of considering the avatar as a combination of a template and a set of characteristics that personalizes the template. The former, which is specific to each VW, can remain proprietary; the latter will be exchanged between the VWs. Therefore, the proposed solution is equilibrating the interests of endusers and VWs providers, allowing to not recreate an avatar for each VW and ensuring that user-defined avatars are consistent with the VW, technically-and businesswise.
Applications of Avatar Mediated Interaction to Teaching, Training, Job Skills and Wellness
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2015
The focus of this chapter is on the application of a framework for remotely delivering role-playing experiences that afford users the opportunity to practice real-world skills in a safe virtual setting. The framework, AMITIES, provides a single individual the capabilities to remotely orchestrate the performances of multiple virtual characters. We illustrate this by introducing avatarenabled scenarios that range from teacher preparation to effectively dealing with complex interpersonal situations such as resistance to peer pressure and participation in job interviews (either as the interviewer or the interviewee).
Proceedings of the 14th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications, 2019
Virtual Reality (VR) technology has the potential to support knowledge communication in several sectors. Still, when educators make use of immersive VR technology in favor of presenting their knowledge, their audience within the same room may not be able to see them anymore due to wearing head-mounted displays (HMDs). In this paper, we propose the Avatar2Avatar system and design, which augments the visual aspect during such a knowledge presentation. Avatar2Avatar enables users to see both a realistic representation of their respective counterpart and the virtual environment at the same time. We point out several design aspects of such a system and address design challenges and possibilities that arose during implementation. We specifically explore opportunities of a system design for integrating 2D video-avatars in existing roomscale VR setups. An additional user study indicates a positive impact concerning spatial presence when using Avatar2Avatar.