Stuart Dennett

2003-05-12T16:37:00.000Z

I'm finding Blogger too frustrating and limiting, so I'll start up a new one based on Movable Type eventually.

I'll try to post the URL here, otherwise you can send me an e-mail with 'Let Me Know' as the subject and I'll get back to you with the new URL when there is one.

2003-05-01T20:26:00.000Z

Moving Objects in Space: Exploiting Proprioception in Virtual-Environment Interaction (Mine et al., 1997)

It's about allowing the user to use parts of his body to interact with the virtual environment.

2003-05-01T20:14:00.000Z

Redirected Walking (Razzaque, Kohn, Whitton, 2001)

If you only read one virtual environments paper this year, make it this one. Users were cleverly manipulated into walking back and forth in a small room, when they thought they were zig-zagging down a long hallway.

2003-05-01T20:04:00.000Z

A Virtual Presence Counter (Slater & Steed, 2000)

They made users call out 'Now!' every time they were distracted from the virtual environment. Doesn't seem like an especially good idea to me, since having to remember to call out would itself distract people IMO.

Warning: 54 pages long, a lot of it being statistical analysis.

2003-05-01T18:53:00.000Z

Go-Go Gadget Arms!

Here's a nice short virtual reality (as people used to call virtual environments back then) paper to get you started.

The Go-Go Interaction Technique: Non-linear Mapping for Direct Manipulation in VR (Poupyrev et al., 1996)

I've also found an even shorter version, but IMO the longer one is easier to follow.

It describes a technique for manipulation of virtual objects just outside of the user's reach by simply extending his virtual reach.

2003-04-30T16:30:00.000Z

After being mentioned in GGA and ludology.org (Thanks Gonzalo!) I feel I have an obligation to improve this blog. I've bought 'Essential Blogging' in the hope that it will show me the path.

Those interested in ludology should check out 'The Fair Play Resource' if they haven't done so already. Games reviewers talk a lot about single-player games being unfair (such as when they present challenges which are deadly to the player the first time he comes across them, through no fault of his own). Yet we hardly ever hear similar criticisms of multi-player games.

"In a game between Jeremy Johnny and Jeff, what happens when Johnny starts picking on Jeremy, avoiding Jeff? We can’t say that the challenges that each present are equally mounted against the other players. Is the ability to pick on the weaker players and avoid the stronger ones now a dictate of the game’s primary strategy, or is it turning our game’s score ratio into a farce?"

I've also been reading papers relating to virtual environments recently, and will post a summary of them as soon as I find them on the web. (I've been reading photocopied versions.) I hope people outside of academic circles will find them useful, as it's not often clear where to start with these kind of things.

Finally, a quick mention to a new games section of geek news site Slashdot. What is it with geeks and hideous colour schemes?

2003-04-28T01:55:00.000Z

The introductory chapter of

'Computer Graphics and Virtual Environments: From Realism to Real-time' by Mel Slater, Anthony Steed and Yiorgos Chrysanthou has some stuff on immersion and interactivity; too much for me to type out. But here's a snippet:

"A very famous experiment...: two kittens were brought up in darkness except for times when one actively explored the visual environment, and the other was carried along behind without itself being active. Both had the same chance for visual learning, but only one was active. The experiment suggested that only the one that actively explored the environment actually learned to see. Our own repeated experiments have shown that those given the chance to use their whole bodies in exploring a VE will generally achieve a higher sense of presence than those who just look at it (Slater and Steed, 2000). Immersive systems provide this unique capability to allow people to actively explore and understand an environment."

No, don't think about the kittens! More important is the evidence for interactivity helping immersion.

I plan to explore this area more over the next few weeks.

2003-04-26T20:27:00.000Z

I'm famous thanks to Jane at gamegirladvance. And only on my first day of having a blog!

Isn't it clever how blogger shows you ads at the top of my blog relevant to virtual environments and such? I can see why Google would want something like that.

Anyway, if anyone wants to discuss that paper, then gamegirladvance allows comments about posts, which is more than this blog does.

2003-04-26T19:18:00.000Z

If anyone wants to e-mail me, my address is sdennett (followed by the 'at' sign) cs (dot) man (dot) ac (dot) uk. I think I'll have to fiddle with the blog template to get it permanently displayed at the side of my posts.

2003-04-26T18:44:00.000Z

I came across an interesting paper today, 'Walking > Walking-in-Place > Flying, in Virtual Environments' by Usoh et al., 1999. (The link to the actual paper doesn't seem to work, unfortunately. [edit: Here's a working one!] This kind of thing is not uncommon on websites of computer science departments!)

It details some research which found that making a user physically walk to get around a VE gives him/her a greater feeling of immersion than making them walk on the spot, which again seems more immersive than pressing buttons on and moving a 3D mouse to locomote.

They measured the subjective presence in the VE of test subjects, and gave them questionnaires asking about such things as previous games playing experience.

"We... found that females had a higher sense of presence than males. However, since females also played computer games significantly less than males, substituting game playing for gender yields a better fitting model. Greater game playing is associated with lower presence. No other variables were significant."

"Game playing is negatively associated with presence, irrespective of anything else. However, there is the same confounding of game playing and gender."

If the ludology community don't already know about this, it could be of some interest to them. It suggests that over time, gamers find VEs less immersive. This could explain why people often 'grow out' of playing games, and why they speak of not getting the same 'buzz' from gaming as they used to.

It may explain why 'casual' gamers (typically women) can become absorbed by simple or abstract games such as Tetris and Minesweeper, yet be turned off by something more immersive like Halo. More 'hardcore' gamers (typically male) might seek out such games as Halo and Quake for their immersive properties, graphically and otherwise. Of course. this often requires them to buy the latest hardware.

I've fired off a few mails to ludology people about this, and also to the owners of that website to ask if they can get the paper online.

2003-04-26T18:07:00.000Z

Hi! I've started this blog to keep a record of my MSc project and thoughts about games and stuff. Nothing too personal.

I'm a postgraduate student at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Manchester, England. My project supervisor is Roger J. Hubbold. I'm a little sketchy on what exactly my 6-month MSc project will involve, since I'm just starting. What I do know is that it will involve virtual environments (VEs) and haptics in some way. The title is 'Obstacle Avoidance in Virtual Environments'.

At the moment I'm just reading academic papers and MSc theses to see what people have done in this field before me. I've subscribed to the Haptics-L mailing list, and am wondering about whether to join the International Society for Haptics (ISFH) or not. It would mean that I commit to some minor obligations, so I'll ask my supervisor before I make a decision.