Category Archives: Virtual Reality

UNESCO Chair in Cultural Heritage & Visualisation at Curtin University of Technology

Just received this by email, last night:

Establishment of a UNESCO Chair in Cultural Heritage and Visualisation at Curtin University of Technology. Third Parties: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

So the agreement is signed and I will hear from Human Resources regards the provision of two PhD students and a contracted Research Fellow. The majority of their work will be in providing workflows and tutorials and repository guidelines for the storage and deployment and educational use of 3D heritage models/site simulations. I will have to find other avenues of funding for my major line of research, game-like simulation design of heritage sites and historical events and processes.

The specific objectives of this Chair are to:

  • create a Cultural Heritage and Visualisation network to use and advise on 3D models of World Heritage Sites, as well as to show how 3D models can be employed in teaching and research;
  • build capacity through community workshops and learning materials and distribute the teaching resources digitally at no cost to the end user, as well as train research students, post-doctorate scholars and visiting fellows;
  • recommend long-term archive guidelines and ways of linking 30 models to scholarly publications and related scholarly resources and infrastructures;
  • disseminate the results of research activities at conferences and workshops, via online papers, applications and learning materials; and,
  • cooperate closely with UNESCO on relevant programmes and activities, as well as with other relevant UNESCO Chairs.

#GLAMVR16

Well #GLAMVR16 was the twitter hashtag for Friday 26 August’s event held at the HIVE Curtin university, Perth. In the morning two invited speakers (Assistant Professor Elaine Sullivan and Mr Conal Tuohy) gave talks on Digital Karnak and Linked Open Data. They were followed by myself and my colleagues at the School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts, then a workshop on Trove data feed into UNITY game engine dynamically (Mr Michael Wiebrands) and Augmented Reality, Vueforia>Unity (Mr Dominic Manley).

There were three themes/reasons for the morning talks and afternoon workshops.

1.Digital Heritage: Workflows & issues in preserving, exporting & linking digital collections (especially heritage collections for GLAM.

2.Scholarly Making: Encourage makerspaces & other activities in tandem with academic research.

3.Experiential Media: Develop AR/VR & other new media technology & projects esp. for humanities.

The event was part of a strategic grant received from the School of Media Culture and Creative Arts, so thanks very much to MCCA!

Schedule and links to slides

Session title and links to slidesharePRESENTER
IntroductionsEar Zow Digital
Digital KarnakElaine Sullivan, UCSC USA
Linked Open Data VisualisationConal Tuohy, Brisbane
MORNING TEAmorning TEA
Making collections accessible in an online environmentLise Summers
Digital scholarship, makerspaces and the libraryKaren Miller
Digital Heritage Interfaces and Experiential MediaEar Zow Digital
Simple Biometric Devices for Audience EngagementStuart Bender
Usability of interactive digital multimedia in the GLAM sectorBeata Dawson
Emotive Media – Visualisation and Analysis of Human Bio-Feedback DataArtur Lugmayr
Visualising information with RAM iSquaresPauline Joseph
LUNCH
digital workflows (UNITY) Michael Wiebrands
Introduction to Augmented RealityDominic Manley
final questions/social networking/ SUNDOWNERCentre for Aboriginal Studies Foyer

GLAM-VR

 Event: GLAMVR short talks and workshop (Friday 26 August, THE HIVE, from 9:00AM)

On Friday 26 August (just before Curtin Research week) a School of Media Culture and Creative Arts academics, Curtin University Library and friends will host at the HIVE a morning series of short presentations.

The main themes are:

  • Digital Heritage: Workflows and issues in preserving, exporting and linking digital collections (especially heritage collections).
  • Scholarly Making: How to encourage makerspaces & other activities in tandem with academic research.
  • Experiential Media: How to learn and develop AR/VR and other new media technology and projects especially for the humanities.

Primary Objectives:

  1. To encourage humanities and especially digital humanities research, connecting research project ideas with an idea of possible equipment and the skills required.
  2. To get people together to discuss their projects and get feedback
  3. To help push forward prototypes and proof-of-concepts
  4. To uncover potential design ideas and available datasets for the Cultural Hackathon later in the year (see below).

Friday Morning: Short Presentations (on Digital Heritage, Scholarly Making & Experiential Media)
Speakers include

  • Assistant Professor Elaine Sullivan, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA, who will speak on Digital Karnak.
  • Mr Conal Tuohy, software developer from Brisbane, will speak on digital collections, visualisation and Linked Open Data.
  • Short presentations from academics at Curtin and there may be a few slots available to others in Perth.

Friday Afternoon: Digital Workflows/Augmented Reality WORKSHOP (3-3.5 hours)

In the afternoon Mr Michael Wiebrands will present workflows on importing digital records and other media assets into the UNITY game engine and he will be followed by Mr Dominic Manley, who will demonstrate Augmented Reality (AR) technology and how to use AR in research projects.

 

Cultural Hackathon, October/November 2016

In October or November we plan to host a CULTURAL HACKATHON. Academics propose ideas, and provide datasets (and so can Libraries, Galleries, Archives and Museums). Hobbyists, programmers, students will spend the entire day in teams working on application prototypes using that data and the VR/AR equipment provided. Proof of concept ideas will be presented and the best project will win a prize and the chance to work with the academics in the near future.

PLEASE NOTE: The event is free for attendees but they will have to register at EVENTBRITE (link to follow) for either the morning presentations or the afternoon workshop. We recommend people register and attend both but having separate registrations is to encourage those who can only make one session. Numbers will be limited.

Digital Heritage, Scholarly Making & Experiential Media

Our internal small grant (School of Media Culture and Creative Arts, Curtin University) was successful!

Here is a synopsis of the application (redacted):

Digital Heritage, Scholarly Making & Experiential Media

We propose

  • A one-day workshop [Friday 26 August 2016, HIVE] with 3D, Digital APIs, UNITY and Augmented Reality workshops.
  • We will present our projects at that workshop and a month later meet to review progress and each other’s publications and grants.
  • Then we will organize with the Library and other GLAM partners a cultural hackathon in Perth where programmers and other parties spend a day creating software prototypes based on our ideas from the workshop. The best project will win a prize but the IP will be open source and contestants may be invited into the research projects or related grant applications.
  • Equipment to build prototypes and showcases for future grants. Part of the money will also go into Virtual Reality headsets, and Augmented Reality equipment that can be loaned out from the MCCA store to postgraduates and students.

The above would help progress the below research projects:

  • Another need is to develop the maker-space and digital literacy skills in information studies and the Library Makerspace, to develop a research area in scholarly making.
  • Another project is to integrate archives and records with real-time visualisation such as in the area of digital humanities scholarship, software training in digital humanities, and hands on workshops and crafting projects at the Curtin University Library.
  • Another project is to explore how SCALAR can integrate 3D and Augmented Reality and create a framework for cloud-based media assets that could dynamically relate to an online scholarly publication and whether that journal in printed form, with augmented reality trackers and head mounted displays could create multimedia scholarly journals where the multimedia is dynamically downloaded from the Internet so can be continually updated. Can this work inform future developments of eSPACE and interest in ‘scholarly making’ and makerspaces?
  • There is potential to create an experiential media research cluster with the new staff of SODA, to explore immersive and interactive media that can capture emotions and affects of participants or players. This requires suitable equipment.

Publications Available for Download

Fo those interested, many of my publications are available for download at

https://curtin.academia.edu/ErikChampion

Also, the following paper passed its embargo period so feel free to download that one as well.

Defining Cultural Agents for Virtual Heritage Environments

(Presence, Vol. 24, No. 3, Summer 2015, 179–186, doi:10.1162/PRES_a_00234, 2015, Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Abstract
This article describes the primary ways in which intelligent agents have been employed in virtual heritage projects and explains how the special requirements of virtual heritage environments necessitate the development of cultural agents. How do we distinguish between social agents and cultural agents? Can cultural agents meet these specific heritage objectives?

CFP: Virtual Reality Games, International Journal of Computer Games Technology

We are currently accepting submissions for our upcoming Special Issue titled “Virtual Reality Games,” which will be published in International Journal of Computer Games Technology in April 2017. The Special Issue is open to both original research articles and review articles, and the deadline for submission is November 25, 2016. You can find the Call for Papers at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijcgt/si/787829/cfp/.

International Journal of Computer Games Technology has been accepted for coverage in the Emerging Sources Citation Index, which is a new edition of the Web of Science that was launched in November 2015. This means that any article published in the journal will be indexed in the Web of Science at the time of publication. The journal is a peer-reviewed, open-access publication, which means that all published articles are made freely available online at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijcgt/ without a subscription and authors retain the copyright of their work.

Please read over the journal’s author guidelines at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijcgt/guidelines/ for more information on the journal’s policies and the submission process. Manuscripts should be submitted online to the Special Issue at http://mts.hindawi.com/submit/journals/ijcgt/vrga/.

3D models: Advanced challenges, UCLA

Daisy-O’lice I. Williams, University of Oregon, presents to the insitute on day 1, 20 June 2016, UCLA.

I was very fortunate to be invited to the NEH-funded Advanced Challenges in Theory and Practice in 3D Modeling of Cultural Heritage Sites Institute, hosted at University of Massachusetts in 2015 and University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) 20-23 June 2016.
Some points I noticed reoccurring over the four days (and which I also added to the #neh3D twitter stream) were:

  1. People are still inventing the wheel when it comes to interaction in virtual environments. But you all knew that anyway.
  2. There is still a gap between educators and libraries who just want to get projects made, students engaged, and assets saved and those who talk about the big metadata / ontology questions. Nobody apart from Piotr used CIDOC-CRM for example and as he and I agreed, there needs to be more useful examples for archaeologists and architects.
  3. We still need an open source augmented reality platform: Content providers will try to lock you in to their own devices (http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/article/602484/google-building-its-own-smartphone-report-says/) and AR software is commercial, risky and when the AR company disappears so does your augmented reality project! To add insult to injury many AR software apps store you models offline or in a secure cloud so you cannot directly access them even though you made them.[I have just heard of ARGON, will have to investigate].
  4. There is no suitable 3D model+scholarly journal, the editor in chief of Digital Applications in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage, Bernard Frischer, admitted their 3D solution was not yet a fully usable solution plus Elsevier say they own the model. Actually, I think the ownership of the scholarly content is as much an issue as the lack of a suitable 3D viewer. Other journals that may offer similar issues but 3D model potential are http://intarch.ac.uk/ (“All our content is open access”) and ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH). However at the workshop one of the founders of SCALAR expressed interest in exploring 3D for SCALAR so hopefully something eventuates with this working party.

Many thanks to Alyson Gill (UMass) and Lisa Snyder (UCLA) for the opportunity to hear about US developments and the really cool CULTURAL HERITAGE MARKUP LANGUAGE CIDOC_CRM project that Piotr Kuroczyński (Herder Institute Germany) presented.

3D popups and scholarly books

Scholarly publishers want to produce quality longterm-durable books. I get that. But some of us young digital guerilla turks want to combine 3D and augmented technologies so 3D models can be shared and experimented (played) with.
And 3D models should be able to change over time, to link to different scholarly resources and models and links and linked resources should be able to be maintained and modified.

So how do we have stable print materials and changing, dynamic 3D models?

Easy peasy.
Consider the magic book. You put on these special see through glasses. Open a book. The camera recognises the augmented reality tracker (marker) on an open page and on your see-through glasses is projected a virtual 3D object. It can move, it can have animations. But typically the AR 3D object relates to a point on the page. Now I believe the original marker and related augmented 3D shape was stored on the magic book glasses/goggles.
But this won’t do for scholarly preservation.
Say you open a book, You hold your camera phone over a mark (tag, tracker) on the page of the book. On your phone lens appears a 3D playable object. But the phone does not natively hold the 3D virtual object.
Instead, the tracker/marker on the book induces the phone to search through an online library and retrieve the current 3D virtual object that links to that augmented reality tracker.marker/barcode on the book.
And downloads the most recent virtual model.
Why is this useful? The scholarly publisher only has to produce a normal book but with augmented reality markers (as an image).
The library or academic organisation supplies the links (perhaps the 3D virtual object has its own URI). The phone retrieves the most recent 3D AR object from a database (online) maintained by a library or scholarly community.
And as you open/read the book, augmented reality models dance/float/appear on your book (or iPad or Android tablet).
Perhaps the way you move the tablet/eReader changes the appearance or animation of the AR object (for example: lift it up and the model changes forwards in time,lower the tablet and earlier versions of the model appear)..
And theoretically the book will still be useful even 10 years from now if someone maintains the digital assets available at the URI that the book markers point to.

Still don’t understand? Perhaps I need a diagram!

NB below photos are not mine but from http://masters.donntu.org/2012/iii/akchurin/library/article9.htm in “Collaborative Augmented Reality” written by Mark Billinghurst, Hirokazu Kato, Communications of the ACM – How the virtual inspires the real, Volume 45 Issue 7, ACM New York, NY, USA – July 2002, p. 64–70.

3DH talk: notes from Geoffrey Rockwell

After a wonderful conference in April at Leiden: Interactive Pasts   (and if you get the chance I recommend going to the next one), the very next day I gave a short presentation at the University of Hamburg for the first lecture of their new research group, 3DH:

3DH is a 3-year pilot project for the preparation of a larger research co-operation in a second phase. 3DH focuses on the dynamic visualization and exploration of Humanities data from a DH perspective, and with particular emphasis on 3D-visualizations. The major goals for the pilot phase are (a) to establish a methodological and theoretical orientation as well as to develop prototypes of visualization tools as demonstrators, and to (b) prepare and submit a funding appliaction for phase 2.

You can see notes of my talk, as recorded by Geoffrey Rockwell on their threedh blog here.
Mark Grimshaw gave a talk on Rethinking Sound, a few weeks later, notes for his talk are here. (Mark Grimshaw was editor of The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality, for which i wrote a History and Cultuarl Heritage in VE chapter).

NB Johanna Drucker, like Geoffrey, is another in-residence scholar for the project.

 

Centres that engage in virtual heritage, archaeology and games research

I get asked this by people quite often and while this is by no means a definitive list, it might help those interested in game-focussed archaeology/heritage PhD opportunities and postdocs:

USA:

Europe:

Asia-Pacific:

As I said, this is by no means a definitive list (and very English language-biased) but I have noticed the above often promote PHD and Postdoc opportunities. I will have some opportunities in PhD positions and a postdoc that I will put on this site, hopefully before June.

CFP VSMM 2016 Kuala Lumpur October 2016

vsmm2016.org “Transdisciplinary – Transmedia – Transformations”
The 22nd International Conference on Virtual Systems & Multimedia VSMM 2016, will be held at Sunway University (SU), Kuala Lumpur, hosted by the Faculty of Arts, the Centre for Research Creation in Digital Media (CRCDM) and the Faculty of Science and Technology, in October 2016. Abstracts due: 16 May 2016.

VSMM2016_CFP.pdf

VR / HMD / Game launches in Perth

On Thursday the new Perth chapter of the Australian Virtual Reality Network (AVRN: http://avrn.net.au/) met and were going to do demos of the HTC Vive.
They Skyped with the Sydney chapter who apparently have 80-100 attend the monthly meetings.
The Sydney speaker (leader of StartVR) showed his project and he and another developer ranked the VIVE their favorite, the Samsung Gear best of the phone-based VR (and I did not realize it comes bundled with the Samsung S7 phone, the phone acting as a form of external graphics processor to the display) and the Rift now showing its age and Google Cardboard (really just cardboard box around an android or iOS phone) good as $5 marketing/corporate handouts. They are most interested in the upcoming Playstation 4 HMD, as it works with existing Playstations (not the older version I assume) and hence will have a large ready market.

I instead then left this rather corporate group for the other meeting, a game developer launch -LEVEL ONE [http://www.levelone.org.au/[ at 167 Fitzgerald St Perth, a more indie game incubator/studio/community that has some connection to Film TV Interactive and the State Library.
A local game company had a music interface game in the VIVE which I played with and I quite liked the setup, good resolution, head tracking and very light responsive controllers I thought.
I did not ask how easy it is to develop for and am quite interested.

Post-doctoral contract offer : Collaborative mapping and geovisualisation of spatio-historical data sets

The MAP research unit offers a post-doctoral position for a period of 12 months starting on June 1st 2016. The position profile is related to the field of geovisualisation, but in an application to spatio-historical data sets, and in the context of a citizen science exploratory project.

The MAP unit, funded by CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research) and by the French Ministry for Culture, conducts interdisciplinary research activities focusing on the integration of computer science methodologies, formalisms and tools to applications fields like heritage architecture, history and archaeology, spatio-temporal dynamics (www.map.cnrs.fr).

The team is in charge of an exploratory research programme entitled Territographie (www.map.cnrs.fr/territographie), a programme the aim of which is to weigh the potential impact of the citizen science approach in the study of the so-called minor heritage (i.e. collections encompassing tools for agriculture, old occupations, unlisted edifices, etc.).
The team wishes to develop and test a customizable collaborative mapping solution, intended for use in collecting information as well as in browsing/selecting information.

You will find attached two PDF documents (one in French, one in English) presenting the details of the offer : context , mission, skills required , conditions, application procedures.

Contact:

Livio De Luca
Directeur de Recherche au CNRS
Directeur de l’UMR CNRS/MCC MAP _ Modèles et simulations pour l’Architecture et le Patrimoine
http://www.map.cnrs.fr

Email: livio.deluca

postDoctoralPosition_territographie.pdf

offrePostDoc_territographie.pdf

Review of Critical Gaming: Interactive History and Virtual Heritage

Internet Archaeology (@IntarchEditor)
16/02/2016, 7:52 PM
NEW! Review of Critical Gaming: Interactive History and Virtual Heritage dx.doi.org/10.11141/ia.40… @nzerik pic.twitter.com/TMsT7pHRx1

I have to say I found this a fair and interesting book review, my book was intended more as a primer for ideas for others to both reflect on and design (as well as evaluate) virtual heritage and interactive history projects but the change in jobs (and countries) chapter structure and word parameters resulted in some chapters to be less in-depth than the topics deserved. And as I noted on Twitter there is at least one (and probably several) reasons for the apparently too-dominant focus on built heritage! So sorry archaeologists but thanks to all for retweeting the review!

Call for Book Chapters: “Place and the Virtual”

I am seeking 8-12 chapters for an edited book on “Place and the Virtual”. Proposed chapters can be on

  1. Definitions, main concepts, historical interpretations.
  2. Critical reviews of virtual places (theoretical or individual existing or past or future examples).
  3. Investigations into the similarities dissonances and differences between real places and virtual places.
  4. Applications of theories in other fields to the design or criticism of virtuality and place.
  5. Implications of related technologies, social trends, issues and applications.

Typical book chapter length: 5,000–8,000 words

Current Status of Proposal: The book proposal will be sent to the below editors for review when I have approximately 8-12 chapter abstracts.
Submission format: by email or attached word or RTF (rich text format) document, approximately 300-500 words.
Deadline for chapter abstracts: Still considering applications.

Email your abstract to: erik DOT champion AT Curtin DOT edu DOT au

Proposed to be part of a new planned Bloomsbury Books Series: Thinking Place, Series Editors Jessica Dubow and Jeff Malpas.Please distribute to interested parties.

MINECRAFT VR/3D/3D python programming tutorials

MODELS/TERRAIN

We are looking at creating a projected/tracked 3D environment of Perth and Curtin for Curtin Library’s makerspace using Digital Elevation Models (DEM) from sites like

  1. http://vterrain.org/Locations/au/ e.g. http://www.simmersionholdings.com/customers/stories/city-of-perth.html
  2. Then, import into minecraft: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJf2_pQo0dQ
  3. Or from Google Earth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wha2m4_CPoo

Python

We are looking at creating Python for archaeologists & historians in Minecraft:

Minecraft in a high end game engine and vice versa

Minecraft projection

Minecraft & Oculus & gear

Minecraft in 3D?

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/492117/3d-vision/minecraft-does-minecraft-work-in-3d-/

Game Engines and VR (CryEngine UDK/UE4 Blender & Unity)

CRYENGINE (get it free here)

UnrealEngine4 (get the UDK here)

BLENDER (get it free here)

UNITY (get it free here)

nb Image above Unreal Tournament from downloadable model at http://publicvr.org/

PS4 camera appears to work with Mac OS X

As an alternative to Kinect One (which requires Windows 8) the PS4 eye camera has some interesting features/functions although it is lower res and does not have an Infra Red (IR) blaster..
And can cost $85 AUD or cheaper online or via JB hifi…

How does it compare to Microsoft’s Kinect One camera?
Review in 2013:http://au.ign.com/blogs/finalverdict/2013/11/02/xbox-one-vs-playstation-4-kinect-20-vs-playstation-4-camera
Review in 2014: http://www.techradar.com/au/news/gaming/consoles/ps4-vs-xbox-720-which-is-better-1127315/5#articleContent
A not so positive review: http://www.techradar.com/au/reviews/gaming/gaming-accessories/playstation-4-camera-1202008/review

One possible future use for PS4 eye camera, the VR Project Morpheus: http://www.techradar.com/au/reviews/gaming/project-morpheus-1235379/review

http://www.psdevwiki.com/ps4/PlayStation_4_Camera

Available functions

  • photo, video
  • voice commands (available as well with an earset with microphone)
  • depth calculation/imaging
  • pad, move, face, head and hand recognition/tracking
  • one of the cameras can be used for generating the video image, with the other used for motion tracking.

http://www.psdevwiki.com/ps4/Talk:PlayStation_4_Camera

Features (Could be used for eye tracking..)

  • automatic black level calibration (ABLC) support 2×2 binning
  • programmable controls for frame rate, mirror and flip, standard serial SCCB interface cropping and windowing
  • image quality controls: lens correction and defective pixel canceling two-lane MIPI/LVDS serial output interface
  • embedded 256 bits one-time programmable (OTP)
  • memory for part identification, etc.
  • supports output formats: 8/10/12-bit RAW RGB on-chip phase lock loop (PLL)(MIPI/LVDS)
  • supports horizontal and vertical sub-sampling programmable I/O drive capability
  • supports images sizes: 1280×800, 640×400, and 320×200
  • built-in 1.5V regulator for core
  • support alternate frame HDR / line HDR
  • fast mode switching

What can you do with it?
http://ps4eye.tumblr.com
/
“Bigboss (@psxdev) has successfully streamed video data from the PS4 camera to OS X!”
Picture at https://twitter.com/psxdev/status/439787015606136833

Drivers for PS4
http://bigboss-eyetoy.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/ps4eyecam-released.html
Links to https://github.com/bigboss-ps3dev/PS4EYECam/
“It is the first public driver for PlayStation 4 Camera licensed under gpl.”

Historical
PS3Eye for Mac: http://webcam-osx.sourceforge.net/