Multiple virtual rafts: a multi-user paradigm for interacting with communities of autonomous characters

Authors:
Bill Tomlinson;Jesse Gray;Man Lok Yau
Affiliations:
University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA;MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, MA;University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA
Venue:
CHI '05 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Year:
2005

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Abstract

This paper describes a multi-user version of the "Virtual Raft Project" being exhibited in the Interactivity Program at CHI 2005. The Virtual Raft Project is an interactive installation in which communities of autonomous animated characters inhabit desktop "virtual islands." A human participant may transport the characters between the islands via a mobile device-based "virtual raft." This paper describes an implementation of a multi-user version of this project, in which several virtual rafts may be used simultaneously to carry characters among the islands. The multi-user experience improves on the single-user original in four ways: increased throughput, increased collaboration among the participants, increased enjoyment for the participants, and the introduction of a new mode of interaction (characters jumping directly from one raft to another). This paper also provides a preliminary evaluation of the entire system through observations from a deployment of the Virtual Raft Project to approximately two hundred people.