Autor(es): da Costa, João Pedro Botelho Castela
Data: 2011
Identificador Persistente: http://hdl.handle.net/10451/13901
Origem: Repositório da Universidade de Lisboa
Assunto(s): Physics Engine; Interactivity,; Virtual Characters; Immersion; Credibility; Virtual Environment
Virtual scenarios inhabited by virtual humans have been used in a wide range of application areas like entertainment, industrial and military training, education, psychotherapy and medicine. Many of these environments are conceived to offer imersive experiences to the user. The sensation of imersion depends in the type of equipment used during an experience, but it depends especially in the users imagination, stimulated by the credibility degree the experience exhibits. Physics explains phenomena that take part in our lives, such as the force of gravity, speed and acceleration, for example. The use of physics engines is a common approach to credibly simulate these phenomena. They are, majorly, free software components that ensure a runtime execution. The greatest advantage from applying these type of components is the level of credibility attained in the simulations, which potentially increases the sensation of immersion, enriching the user’s experience. However, the production of virtual environments with such characteristics is a complicated and long proccess, and requires the expertise or mastery of several tools. Our work presents an application which recieves as input a set of configuration and content files (scenario models, character models and animations) and generates a virtual environment inhabited by virtual characters, capable of moving coherently within the scenario, thus supporting some level of interaction. In these enviroments the Laws of Physics are simulated, thanks to the integration of a physics engine. We identified some application areas for our work, but, certainly, there are several others with potential interest.
