Thomas Muender, Anke V. Reinschluessel, Sean Drewes, Dirk Wenig, Tanja Döring, and Rainer Malaka

Professionals in domains like film, theater, or architecture often rely on physical models to visualize spaces. With virtual reality (VR) new tools are available providing immersive experiences with correct perceptions of depth and scale. However, these lack the tangibility of physical models. Using tangible objects in VR can close this gap but creates the challenges of producing suitable objects and interacting with them with only the virtual objects visible. This work addresses these challenges by evaluating tangibles with three haptic fidelities: equal disc-shaped tangibles for all virtual objects, Lego-built tangibles, and 3D-printed tangibles resembling the virtual shapes. We present results from a comparative study on immersion, performance, and intuitive interaction and interviews with domain experts. The results show that 3D-printed objects perform best, but Lego offers a good trade-off between fast creation of tangibles and sufficient fidelity. The experts rate our approach as useful and would use all three versions.

Thomas Muender, Georg Volkmar, Dirk Wenig, and Rainer Malaka

Previsualization (previs) is an essential phase in the visual design process of narrative media such as film, animation, and stage plays. In digital previs complex 3D tools are used that are not specifically designed for the previs process making it hard to use for creative persons without much technical knowledge. To enable building dedicated previs software, we analyze the tasks performed in digital previs based on interviews with domain experts. In order to support creative persons in their previs work we propose the use of natural user interfaces and discuss which are suited for the specific previs tasks.

Dmitry Alexandrovsky, Tanja Döring, Susanne Putze, Thomas Fröhlich, Timo Stabbert and Rainer Malaka

We present VRBox--an interactive sandbox for playful and immersive terraforming that combines the approach of augmented sandboxes with virtual reality technology and mid-air gestures. Our interactive demonstration offers a virtual reality (VR) environment containing a landscape, which the user designs via interacting with real sand while wearing a VR head-mounted display (HMD). Whereas real sandboxes have been used with augmented reality before, our approach using sand in VR offers novel and original interactive features such as exploring the sand landscape from a first person perspective. In this demo, users can experience our VR-sandbox system consisting of a box with sand, multiple Kinect depth sensing, an HMD, and hand tracking, as well as an interactive world simulation.

Michael Bonfert, Robert Porzel and Rainer Malaka

We propose an approach to facilitate adjustable grip for object interaction in virtual reality. It enables the user to handle objects with loose and firm grip using conventional controllers. Pivotal design properties were identified and evaluated in a qualitative pilot study. Two revised interaction designs with variable grip were compared to the status quo of invariable grip in a quantitative study. The users performed placing actions with all interaction modes. Performance, clutching, task load, and usability were measured. While the handling time increased slightly using variable grip, the usability score was significantly higher. No substantial differences were measured in positioning accuracy. The results lead to the conclusion that variable grip can be useful and improve realism depending on tasks, goals, and user preference.

Thomas Fröhlich, Dmitry Alexandrovsky, Timo Stabbert, Tanja Döring, and Rainer Malaka

Augmented sandboxes have been used as playful and educative tools to create, explore and understand complex models. However, current solutions lack interactive capabilities, missing more immersive experiences such as exploring the sand landscape from a first person perspective. We extend the interaction space of augmented sandboxes into virtual reality (VR) to offer a VR-environment that contains a landscape, which the user designs via interacting with real sand while wearing a virtual reality head-mounted display (HMD). In this paper, we present our current VR-sandbox system consisting of a box with sand, triple Kinect depth sensing, a virtual reality HMD, and hand tracking, as well as an interactive world simulation use case for exploration and evaluation. Our work explores the important and timely topics how to integrate rich haptic interaction with natural materials into VR and how to track and present real physical materials in VR. In a qualitative evaluation with nine experts from computer graphics, game design, and didactics we identified potentials, limitations as well as future application scenarios.

This paper received the Honorable Mentions award at the conference.

Thomas Muender, Thomas Fröhlich, and Rainer Malaka

Previsualization (previs) is an essential phase in the design process of narrative media such as film, animation, and stage plays. Digital previs can involve complex technical tasks, e.g. 3D scene creation, animation and camera work, which require trained skills that are not available to all personnel involved in creative decisions for the production. Interaction techniques such as virtual reality (VR) enables users to interact with 3D content in a natural way compared to classical 2D interfaces. As a first step, we developed VR based prototypes and performed an exploratory user study to evaluate how non-technical professionals from the film, animation and theater domain assess the use of VR for previs. Our results show that users were able to interact with complex 3D scenes after a short phase of familiarization and rated VR for previs as useful for their professional work.

Timo Stabbert, Thomas Fröhlich, Dmitry Alexandrovsky, and Rainer Malaka

Augmented sandboxes are often used as educative tools to create, explore and understand complex models. For the use case of a water cycle simulation, we extend the interaction space of augmented sandboxes into virtual reality to overcome limitations of current systems that include non-interactive 2D projections and shadow problems. We present our ongoing research and the prototypical setup of our VR sandbox consisting of a triple Kinect setup, depth sensing, VR, and hand tracking using Leap Motion. The setup shall help us to explore the space of haptic redirection. Further, we discuss our water cycle simulation use case and interaction scenarios that facilitate VR interaction and visualization.

Thomas Fröhlich

In this paper, I present my ongoing dissertation project in- vestigating playful interaction techniques for productive pur- poses. The objective to find out how users can effectively create digital content while actually playing. Building upon and extending the notions of gamification, serious games and games with a purpose, I focus on productive aspects of play where not a task is extended with playful interaction, instead I aim to create playful environments where play is the main activity, while at the same time, productivity can be achieved as a direct result of the game or play activity. A first user study revealed that the approach has a high hedo- nistic value, low learning curve and creative self-perception. At the same time, the work results are comparable to stan- dard tools in a reproduction task.

Thomas Fröhlich, Jan von Oehsen, and Rainer Malaka

Building 3D scenes for games can be a difficult task, especially for beginners and other non-experts wanting to contribute their own ideas in an easy way. Tools for map or world creation are often complex to understand and use, don’t support the creative process of building a scene, and decouple design from player experience. To overcome these problems, we present a First-Person Shooter (FPS) game for level creation using game mechanics for all tasks, making the process more easy and enjoyable while also providing direct experience of the work from a player’s point of view. We evaluated our approach in a preliminary study where we compared our game to a simplified version of the Unity editor, representing generic world building tools, and found that users enjoy the our game, find it more usable, and feel more creative.