UnrealMe: Embodiment and Immersive Gaming

Closed Human-Computer Interaction Computer Science Bachelor Master Project Thesis No Affiliation

Overview

Developing & Exploring Embodiment impact on User’s behaviour, Experience and Performance in immersive game

“If you see yourself in a virtual body, which moves as you do, how will this affect your behaviour inside the virtual environment and outside of it, in real-life?”

In few words, Embodiment consists in the creation of a convincing virtual representation of the user’s body in an immersive virtual reality settings, for instance using a 3D Head-mounted display such as the Oculus Rift and motion tracking system such as Kinect. Where the virtual body (or surrogate) replicates user’s movement in real-time and support interactions with the virtual environment (e.g. capable of manipulating 3D object).

This project has both practical and fundamental aspects. It aims at developing a framework on the top the Unreal Game Engine to evaluate the impact of embodiment on user’s experiences, performance and behaviour as well as exploring novel type of 3D user interface.

Indeed, information about the player’s health, weapon and environments are traditionally displayed on a 2D interface called Head-up Display (e.g. health bar or power bar in a Street-fighter-like game).
Within a immersive context and user’s embodiments, these information could be now placed directly in the game world in the form of 3D object,and why not directly on the user’s virtual body. We could imagine for instance that the user will have a virtual watch that will give him information about the time left in the game. The traditional 2D representation of clock would therefore be replaced with a much realistica watch worn on the wrist of the user’s virtual body. Such user interface element are called diegetic (when they have a physical representation and are consistent with the game environment and narrative)
Diegetic user interface elements exist within the game world (fiction and geometry) so the player and avatar can interact with them through visual, audible or haptic means.

Critical technical challenges will need to be overcome in order create a convincing virtual representation, replicating faithfully user’s motion and gesture. This includes the development and evaluation of a specific Unrealscript framework linking tracking data (e.g. information coming from Kinect or other tracking system) and virtual avatar movement (skeletal-based animation). It is important to mention that this framework should provide a low-latency and high-accuracy responses in order to maximise the connection user’s mind - virtual body, and so maintain the suspension of disbelief, essential to
The framework should also be generic and permit to quickly modify the aspects of the user’s virtual body (e.g. changing avatar appearance, scale, skills). This will be an essential features to later on explore the impact of virtual body aspect on user’s behaviour and experience. The framework should also permit to develop and attached diegetic user interface elements. (As mentioned in the section below, this last feature will be requested for a group composed of at least four students)
The software developed will provide a base to explore advantages and limitations of embodiment in a immersive gaming context, but further applications will be explored if the project is successful.

Scope

The scope and objective is project is incremental and depends of the number of students involved:

For a group of 2 to 3 students: “Developing & Exploring Embodiment impact on User’s behaviour, Experience and Performance in immersive game”

1. Software Development: students will have first to develop the technology supporting Embodiment within the Unreal Game Engine using off-the-shelve hardware component such as Kinect and Oculus rift for tracking and visualisation. Previous work have been already realised at our lab regarding the replication of user’s movement on a virtual avatar with the Unreal Engine using Kinect and the Oculus Rift. Students would have thus to extend and improve the existing framework, and provide more accurate replication of user’s motion as well as increasing the level of interaction possible.

2. Software Evaluation: In parallel, students in coordination with their supervisor) will elaborate and implement use cases and experiments to evaluate the quality of their implementation.

3. Experimental Research: Then, experiments will be designed and implemented to evaluate the impact of embodiment on user’s experience, performance, behaviour and satisfaction. The experiment will be a comparative study of a First-person shooter immersive game with and without embodiment using the Unreal Tournament 3 FPS Game

For a group of 4 to 6 students: “Developing & Exploring Usability of Diegetic User Interface for Immersive Gaming”

1. Software Development: the framework will be extended in order to support the integration and evaluation of 3D/2D user interfaces directly positioned on the virtual body.

2. Software Evaluation: In parallel, students (in coordination with their supervisor) will elaborate and implement use cases and experiments to evaluate the quality of their implementation.

3. Experimental Research: Then, experiments will be designed and implemented to evaluate the usability of their interfaces compare to traditional ones. The experiment will be a comparative study of a First-person shooter immersive game with and without diegetic interfaces using the Unreal Tournament 3 FPS Game

Requirements

• Good understanding and experience of object-oriented programming (Java and/or C++)
• Previous experience with UDK and Unrealscript preferred
• Games Programming knowledge and experience preferred
• Knowledge of 3D user interfaces preferred
• Notion of 3D modelling and character animations preferred.
• Solid organisation skills and team player necessary.
• High motivation to develop novel type of gaming platforms and interfaces.

Ansprechpartner

Dr. Jean-Luc Lugrin & Prof. Dr. Marc Erich Latoschik

Dr. Jean-Luc Lugrin

Human-Computer Interaction

Universität Würzburg

Am Hubland

D-97074 Würzburg

Phone: +49 931 31-81704

EMail: jean-Luc.lugrin@uni-wuerzburg.de

Room: 114 - Gebäude Informatik/Physik, Campus Süd

Prof. Dr. Marc Erich Latoschik

Human-Computer Interaction

Universität Würzburg

Am Hubland

D-97074 Würzburg

Phone: +49 (0) 931 31 85 871

EMail: marc.latoschik@uni-wuerzburg.de

Room: 116

Contact Persons at the University Würzburg