Madame bovary on the holodeck: immersive interactive storytelling

  • Authors:
  • Marc Cavazza;Jean-Luc Lugrin;David Pizzi;Fred Charles

  • Affiliations:
  • University of Teesside, Middlesbrough, United Kingdom;University of Teesside, Middlesbrough, United Kingdom;University of Teesside, Middlesbrough, United Kingdom;University of Teesside, Middlesbrough, United Kingdom

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Multimedia
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

In this paper, we describe a small-scale, yet complete, integration of a real-time immersive interactive storytelling system. While significant progress has been achieved in recent years on the individual component technologies of interactive storytelling, the main objective of this work is to investigate the concept of interactive storytelling in a fully immersive context. We describe each individual component of immersive interactive storytelling from a technical perspective. We have used a commercial game engine as a development environment, supporting real-time visualisation as well as the inclusion of Artificial Intelligence components controlling virtual actors. This visualisation engine has been ported to an immersive setting using dedicated software and hardware supporting real-time stereoscopic visualisation. The hardware platform is built around a 4-sided CAVE-like immersive display operated by a PC-cluster. The interactive storytelling engine is constituted by a planning system based on characters motivations and emotional states. The user can interact with the virtual world using multimodal interaction. We illustrate the system's behaviour on the implementation of excerpts from Madame Bovary, a classic XIXth century novel, and demonstrate the ability for the user to play the role of one of the characters and influence the unfolding of the story by his actions.