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

• Authors: Burkhard Wünsche;Daniel Keymer;Robert Amor
• Venue: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference of the NZ Chapter of the ACM Special Interest Group on Human-Computer Interaction
• Year: 2010

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.