This book explores the nature and importance of sound in virtual reality (VR). Approaching the subject from a holistic perspective, the book delivers an emergent framework of VR sound. This framework brings together numerous elements that collectively determine the nature of sound in VR; from various aspects of VR technology, to the physiological and psychological complexities of the user, to the wider technological, historical and sociocultural issues. Garner asks, amongst other things: what is the meaning of sound? How have fictional visions of VR shaped our expectations for present technology? How can VR sound hope to evoke the desired responses for such an infinitely heterogeneous user base? This book if for those with an interest in sound and VR, who wish to learn more about the great complexities of the subject and discover the contemporary issues from which future VR will surely advance.

Written as the successor to Virtual World Design: Creating Immersive Virtual Environments, this book carries the ideas brought forward in its predecessor to new levels of virtual world design exploration and experimentation. Written by an Emmy award-winning designer with 22 years of experience creating virtual environments for television and online communities, Extending Virtual Worlds: Advanced Design for Virtual Environments explores advanced topics such as multi-regional design, game-based sims, and narrative structure for environments. The book provides bedrock knowledge and practical examples of how to leverage design concepts within the intertwined structures of physics engines, level of detail (LOD) systems, and advanced material editors. It also shows designers new ways to influence the experience of virtual world visitors through immersive narrative and storytelling. With over 150 illustrations and 10 step-by-step projects that include the necessary 3D models and modular components, it delivers hours of stimulating creative challenges for people working in public virtual worlds or on private grids. By using this book, novices and advanced users will deepen their understanding of game design and how it can be applied to creating game-based virtual environments. It also serves as a foundational text for class work in distance learning, simulation, and other learning technologies that use virtual environments.

The current popular and scientific interest in virtual environments has provided a new impetus for investigating binaural and spatial hearing. However, the many intriguing phenomena of spatial hearing have long made it an exciting area of scientific inquiry. Psychophysical and physiological investigations of spatial hearing seem to be converging on common explanations of underlying mechanisms. These understandings have in turn been incorporated into sophisticated yet mathematically tractable models of binaural interaction. Thus, binaural and spatial hearing is one of the few areas in which professionals are soon likely to find adequate physiological explanations of complex psychological phenomena that can be reasonably and usefully approximated by mathematical and physical models. This volume grew out of the Conference on Binaural and Spatial Hearing, a four-day event held at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in response to rapid developments in binaural and spatial hearing research and technology. Meant to be more than just a proceedings, it presents chapters that are longer than typical proceedings papers and contain considerably more review material, including extensive bibliographies in many cases. Arranged into topical sections, the chapters represent major thrusts in the recent literature. The authors of the first chapter in each section have been encouraged to take a broad perspective and review the current state of literature. Subsequent chapters in each section tend to be somewhat more narrowly focused, and often emphasize the authors' own work. Thus, each section provides overview, background, and current research on a particular topic. This book is significant in that it reviews the important work during the past 10 to 15 years, and provides greater breadth and depth than most of the previous works.

A rare look at the role of special effects in creating fictional worlds and transmedia franchises From comic book universes crowded with soaring superheroes and shattering skyscrapers to cosmic empires set in far-off galaxies, today's fantasy blockbusters depend on visual effects. Bringing science fiction from the studio to your screen, through film, television, or video games, these special effects power our entertainment industry. More Than Meets the Eye delves into the world of fantastic media franchises to trace the ways in which special effects over the last 50 years have become central not just to transmedia storytelling but to worldbuilding, performance, and genre in contemporary blockbuster entertainment. More Than Meets the Eye maps the ways in which special effects build consistent storyworlds and transform genres while traveling from one media platform to the next. Examining high-profile franchises in which special effects have played a constitutive role such as Star Trek, Star Wars, The Matrix, and The Lord of the Rings, as well as more contemporary franchises like Pirates of the Caribbean and Harry Potter, Bob Rehak analyzes the ways in which production practices developed alongside the cultural work of industry professionals. By studying social and cultural factors such as fan interaction, this book provides a context for understanding just how much multiplatform storytelling has come to define these megahit franchises. More Than Meets the Eye explores the larger history of how physical and optical effects in postwar Hollywood laid the foundation for modern transmedia franchises and argues that special effects are not simply an adjunct to blockbuster filmmaking, but central agents of an entire mode of production.

EPUB and EPDF available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Since the mid-2010s, virtual reality (VR) technology has advanced rapidly. This book explores the many opportunities that VR can offer for humanities and social sciences researchers. The book provides a user-friendly, non-technical methods guide to using ready-made VR content and 360 Degrees video as well as creating custom materials. It examines the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches to using VR, providing helpful, real-world examples of how researchers have used the technology. The insights drawn from this analysis will inspire scholars to explore the possibilities of using VR in their own research projects.

The long-standing cultural imperative of augmenting human intellect continues to move ever closer to its full manifestation, described by Marshall McLuhan as an extension of the human nervous system. The escalating blending of immersive technologies with advanced computation has created an emerging domain which increasingly allows socio-technical system makers to produce not only human-computer interactions, but advanced, multi-minded human+computer (H+C) systems. The critical shift toward user immersion within systems of digital information and simulation makes the scale of immersive media's potential impact on human life, culture and well-being unlike that of any previous medium. In Designing XR, Peter (Zak) Zakrzewski presents H+C immersion as a multi-dimensional design problem - a Research Through Design (RTD) zone which addresses the question of: How can transformative design-thinking-based knowledge system complement the existing human-computer interaction (HCI) invention model to contribute to the creation of more participatory, socially viable, and humane immersive media environments? The book lays out a proposal for ushering the creation of ecologically sound augmented mind based on two essential tasks. The first involves a framework for the design, implementation, and iteration of purposeful, multi-minded, participatory immersive H+C systems. The second focuses on the extended reality experience (XRX) design practice that rhetorically invites users to actively engage with immersive systems while fully exercising their autonomy and agency based on informed choice.

A manual for both designers and users, comprehensively presenting the current state of experts' knowledge on virtual reality (VR) in computer science, mechanics, optics, acoustics, physiology, psychology, ergonomics, ethics, and related area. Designed as a reference book and design guide to help the reader develop a VR project, it presents the reader with the importance of the user s needs and various aspects of the human computer interface (HCI). It further treats technical aspects of VR, hardware and software implementations, and details on the sensory and psycho-sensory interfaces. Providing various concepts and technologies, including mathematics and modelling techniques, it allows the reader to formalize, conceptualize and construct a virtual reality project from original thought to application. This book is intended for engineers, computer scientists and computer game developers working on various VR applications. It can further serve as an educational tool in Virtual Reality courses for senior graduate and postgraduate students.

Virtual Manufacturing presents a novel concept of combining human computer interfaces with virtual reality for discrete and continuous manufacturing systems. The authors address the relevant concepts of manufacturing engineering, virtual reality, and computer science and engineering, before embarking on a description of the methodology for building augmented reality for manufacturing processes and manufacturing systems. Virtual Manufacturing is centered on the description of the development of augmented reality models for a range of processes based on CNC, PLC, SCADA, mechatronics and on embedded systems. Further discussions address the use of augmented reality for developing augmented reality models to control contemporary manufacturing systems and to acquire micro- and macro-level decision parameters for managers to boost profitability of their manufacturing systems. Guiding readers through the building of their own virtual factory software, Virtual Manufacturing comes with access to online files and software that will enable readers to create a virtual factory, operate it and experiment with it. This is a valuable source of information with a useful toolkit for anyone interested in virtual manufacturing, including advanced undergraduate students, postgraduate students and researchers.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com While all media are part of intermedial networks, video games are often at the nexus of that network. They not only employ cinematics, embedded books, and in-world television screens for various purposes, but, in our convergence culture, video games also play a vital role in allowing players to explore transmedia storyworlds. At the same time, video games are frequently thematized and remediated in film, television, and literature. Indeed, the central role video games assume in intermedial networks provides testament to their significance in the contemporary media environment. In this volume, an international group of contributors discuss not only intermedial phenomena in video games, but also the intermedial networks surrounding them. Intermedia Games-Games Inter Media will deepen readers' understanding of the convergence culture of the early twenty-first century and video games' role in it.

Like virtual reality, augmented reality is becoming an emerging platform in new application areas for museums, edutainment, home entertainment, research, industry, and the art communities using novel approaches which have taken augmented reality beyond traditional eye-worn or hand-held displays. In this book, the authors discuss spatial augmented reality approaches that exploit optical elements, video projectors, holograms, radio frequency tags, and tracking technology, as well as interactive rendering algorithms and calibration techniques in order to embed synthetic supplements into the real environment or into a live video of the real environment. Special Features: - Comprehensive overview - Detailed mathematical equations - Code fragments - Implementation instructions - Examples of Spatial AR displays The authors have put together a preliminary collection of Errata. Updates will be posted to this site as necessary.

Welcome to theatre of the 21st century, in which everything -except for the viewer can be simulated.
"Virtual Theatres" is the first full-length book of its kind to offer an investigation of the interface between theatre performance and digital arts. Through discussion of a variety of artists and performers - including Stelarc, Orlan, Forced Entertainment, Merce Cunningham and Blast Theory - Gabriella Giannachi analyses the aesthetic concerns of current computer arts practices and shows how they radically question our conventional uses and definitions of time, space, place, character, identity and realness. The book not only allows for a re-interpretation of what is possible in the world of performance practice but also demonstrates how 'virtuality' has come to represent a major parameter for our understanding and experience of contemporary art and life.

A beyond human knowledge and reach, robotics is strongly involved in tackling challenges of new emerging multidisciplinary fields. Together with humans, robots are busy exploring and working on the new generation of ideas and problems whose solution is otherwise impossible to find. The future is near when robots will sense, smell and touch people and their lives. Behind this practical aspect of human-robotics, there is a half a century spanned robotics research, which transformed robotics into a modern science. The Advances in Robotics and Virtual Reality is a compilation of emerging application areas of robotics. The book covers robotics role in medicine, space exploration and also explains the role of virtual reality as a non-destructive test bed which constitutes a premise of further advances towards new challenges in robotics. This book, edited by two famous scientists with the support of an outstanding team of fifteen authors, is a well suited reference for robotics researchers and scholars from related disciplines such as computer graphics, virtual simulation, surgery, biomechanics and neuroscience.

Contemporary research in science and engineering is seeking to harness the versatility and sustainability of living organisms. By exploiting natural principles, researchers hope to create new kinds of technology that are self-repairing, adaptable, and robust, and to invent a new class of machines that are perceptive, social, emotional, perhaps even conscious. This is the realm of the 'living machine'. Living machines can be divided into two types: biomimetic systems, that harness the principles discovered in nature and embody them in new artifacts, and biohybrid systems in which biological entities are coupled with synthetic ones. Living Machines: A handbook of research in biomimetic and biohybrid systems surveys this flourishing area of research, capturing the current state of play and pointing to the opportunities ahead. Promising areas in biomimetics include self-organization, biologically inspired active materials, self-assembly and self-repair, learning, memory, control architectures and self-regulation, locomotion in air, on land or in water, perception, cognition, control, and communication. Drawing on these advances the potential of biomimetics is revealed in devices that can harvest energy, grow or reproduce, and in animal-like robots that range from synthetic slime molds, to artificial fish, to humanoids. Biohybrid systems is a relatively new field, with exciting and largely unknown potential, but one that is likely to shape the future of humanity. This book surveys progress towards new kinds of biohybrid such as robots that merge electronic neurons with biological tissue, micro-scale machines made from living cells, prosthetic limbs with a sense of touch, and brain-machine interfaces that allow robotic devices to be controlled by human thought. The handbook concludes by exploring some of the impacts that living machine technologies could have on both society and the individual, exploring questions about how we will see and understand ourselves in a world in which the line between the natural and the artificial is increasingly blurred. With contributions from leading researchers from science, engineering, and the humanities, this handbook will be of broad interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students. Researchers in the areas of computational modeling and engineering, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, artificial life, biorobotics, neurorobotics, and human-machine interfaces will find Living Machines an invaluable resource.

There is a growing body of literature that focuses on the similarities and differences between how people behave in the offline world vs. how they behave in these virtual environments. Data mining has aided in discovering interesting insights with respect to how people behave in these virtual environments. The book addresses prediction, mining and analysis of offline characteristics and behaviors from online data and vice versa. Each chapter will focus on a different aspect of virtual worlds to real world prediction e.g., demographics, personality, location, etc.

A rare look at the role of special effects in creating fictional worlds and transmedia franchises From comic book universes crowded with soaring superheroes and shattering skyscrapers to cosmic empires set in far-off galaxies, today's fantasy blockbusters depend on visual effects. Bringing science fiction from the studio to your screen, through film, television, or video games, these special effects power our entertainment industry. More Than Meets the Eye delves into the world of fantastic media franchises to trace the ways in which special effects over the last 50 years have become central not just to transmedia storytelling but to worldbuilding, performance, and genre in contemporary blockbuster entertainment. More Than Meets the Eye maps the ways in which special effects build consistent storyworlds and transform genres while traveling from one media platform to the next. Examining high-profile franchises in which special effects have played a constitutive role such as Star Trek, Star Wars, The Matrix, and The Lord of the Rings, as well as more contemporary franchises like Pirates of the Caribbean and Harry Potter, Bob Rehak analyzes the ways in which production practices developed alongside the cultural work of industry professionals. By studying social and cultural factors such as fan interaction, this book provides a context for understanding just how much multiplatform storytelling has come to define these megahit franchises. More Than Meets the Eye explores the larger history of how physical and optical effects in postwar Hollywood laid the foundation for modern transmedia franchises and argues that special effects are not simply an adjunct to blockbuster filmmaking, but central agents of an entire mode of production.

As the Allies advance towards Germany, they face dogged resistance from the hard-pressed German forces. Take command of the Allies in their final push to end the war in Europe, or hold fast as the German defenders as the fight is brought to your door. This new Campaign Book for Bolt Action offers new linked scenarios, rules, troop types and Theatre Selectors, and provides plenty of options for novice and veteran players alike.

The first sustained study of the DC Comics Multiverse, this book explores its history, meanings, and lasting influence. The multiverse is a unique exercise in world-building: a series of parallel and interactive worlds with a cohesive cosmology, developed by various creators over more than 50 years. In examining DC's unique worlds and characters, the book illustrates the expansive potential of a multiverse, full of characters, histories, geographies, religions, ethnographies, and more, and allowing for expressions of legacy, multiplicity, and play that have defined much of DC Comics' output. It shows how a multiverse can be a vital, energizing part of any imaginary world, and argues that students and creators of such worlds would do well to explore the implications and complexities of this world-building technique. Andrew J. Friedenthal has crafted a groundbreaking, engaging, and thoughtful examination of the multiverse, of interest to scholars and enthusiasts of not just comics studies, but also the fields of media studies and imaginary world studies.

A trailblazing inquiry into human love and relationships in the age of super-smart technology Technology is our new life partner. No longer confined to the sidelines, new interactive technologies like AI therapists, avatar friends, and robot assistants are ready to transform technology's role from basic tools of convenience to intimate elements of our social and emotional lives. This turn towards human-like technology signals the beginning of a new epoch in human history, a change already facing both excitement and resistance. Blending science, sociology, history, and psychology, Relationships 5.0 asks how recent technological developments cause us to think differently about our family lives, love affairs, and emotional needs. It argues that we are currently living through a technological paradigm shift similar in magnitude to the preceding agricultural, industrial, and informational revolutions in human history. Thanks to the convergence of the cognitive revolution (AI), the sensorial revolution (VR and AR), and the physical revolution (robots), technology can now fulfill emotional, intellectual, and physical needs that have until now been met by other humans. While many are still wary of human-technology companionship, Relationships 5.0 reveals that these novel interactions aren't as risky as we'd once thought, but can instead make our social and emotional lives richer and more diverse. Still, we must ask: What will the age of Relationships 5.0 look like? How should we prepare for such an age? Who might already be ready to embrace these changes, and why? Guiding readers away from fear and toward a new reality, Relationships 5.0 exposes the fundamental questions behind such essentials as companionship, trust, and love-and offers fascinating and revealing ideas about what the coming years will look like.

The 2-volume set LNCS 10850 and 10851 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Computer Graphics, AVR 2018, held in Otranto, Italy, in June 2018. The 67 full papers and 26 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: virtual reality; augmented and mixed reality; computer graphics; human-computer interaction; applications of VR/AR in medicine; and applications of VR/AR in cultural heritage; and applications of VR/AR in industry.

Virtual reality is able to effectively blur the line between reality and illusion, pushing the limits of our imagination and granting us access to any experience possible. These experiences, ones that the brain is convinced are real, will soon be available at the click of a button. In Experience on Demand, Jeremy Bailenson draws on two decades spent researching the psychological effects of virtual reality to help readers understand this new medium. He offers expert guidelines for interacting with VR and describes the profound ways this technology can be used to hone our performance, help us recover from trauma, improve our learning and communication abilities, and even enhance our empathic and imaginative capacities so that we treat others, the environment and ourselves better.

Even as the popularity of videogames has skyrocketed, a dark cloud continues to hang over them. Many people who play games feel embarrassed to admit as much, and many who don't worry about the long-term effects of a medium often portrayed as dangerous and corruptive. Drawing on years of experience working directly with people who play games, clinical psychologist Alexander Kriss steers the discourse away from extreme and factually inaccurate claims around the role of games in addiction, violence and mental illness, instead focusing on the importance of understanding the unique relationship that forms between a game and its player. Through vivid psychotherapy case illustrations, autobiographical memoir, and a wide range of psychological theory and research, The Gaming Mind lays out an honest and humanistic vision of games, their potentials and risks, and how they can teach us more about who we are and who we could be.

Virtual reality is able to effectively blur the line between reality and illusion, pushing the limits of our imagination and granting us access to any experience possible. These experiences, ones that the brain is convinced are real, will soon be available at the click of a button. In Experience on Demand, Jeremy Bailenson draws on two decades spent researching the psychological effects of virtual reality to help readers understand this new medium. He offers expert guidelines for interacting with VR and describes the profound ways this technology can be used to hone our performance, help us recover from trauma, improve our learning and communication abilities, and even enhance our empathic and imaginative capacities so that we treat others, the environment and ourselves better.

This volume presents the results of a joint National Science Foundation and European Commission Workshop which was set up to identify the future key strategic research directions in the areas of human-centred interaction, online communities and virtual environments. A research agenda is proposed for each area. There is an urgent need to make interaction more centred around human needs and capabilities, and to consider the human environment in virtual environments and in other contextual information-processing activities. The overall goal is to make users more effective in their information or communication tasks by reducing learning times, speeding up performance, lowering error rates, facilitating retention, and increasing subjective satisfaction. Online communities is an area of rapid and dynamic growth with new kinds of interaction, behaviours, communication, and relationship to the world of users and information. Guidelines for basic user interface design need to be extended to accommodate these new technologies and interfaces to users. Fruitful lines of research investigation in all these areas are set out in this book.

The 2-volume set LNCS 10850 and 10851 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Computer Graphics, AVR 2018, held in Otranto, Italy, in June 2018. The 67 full papers and 26 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: virtual reality; augmented and mixed reality; computer graphics; human-computer interaction; applications of VR/AR in medicine; and applications of VR/AR in cultural heritage; and applications of VR/AR in industry.