Via virtual reality (VR) and in 3D immersive virtual environments (IVEs), viewers can observe their surroundings in any direction. This unrestricted view challenges storytelling, as directors cannot control the viewer’s perspective. To overcome this, we propose to develop a system that enhances narrative focus by rendering only high-quality story-critical elements within an IVE. This approach ensures that viewers are guided to the intended view, maintaining the director’s vision while preserving the immersive experience of VR.

Volumetric video (VV) is an emerging 3D format that allows the integration of real people into XR (extended reality) applications. Recent cost-effective AI-based methods have enabled VV capture using single handheld cameras or mobile phones. This study addresses the quality, integration, and acceptance of AI-based VV content creation in an augmented reality (AR) application designed to enhance museum experiences. The main result reveals that, although the current VV quality is lower than professional standards, users still find significant added value and enjoy its immersive experience.

Music videos are short films that integrate songs and imagery produced for artistic and promotional purposes. Modern music videos apply various media capture techniques and creative postproduction technologies to provide a myriad of stimulating and artistic approaches to audience entertainment and engagement for viewing across multiple devices. Within this domain, volumetric video capture technologies (Figure 2) have become an emerging means of recording and reproducing musical performances for new audiences to access via traditional 2D screens and emergent extended reality platforms, such as augmented and virtual reality. These 3D digital reproductions of musical performances are captured live and are enhanced to deliver cutting-edge audiovisual entertainment (Figure 1). However, the precise impact of volumetric video in music video entertainment is still in a state of flux.

This demo paper proposes to exhibit the pilot episode of XR Ulysses, a creative project investigating the possibilities for live performance using three-dimensional volumetric video (VV) techniques via virtual reality (VR) technologies. XR Ulysses is part of a series of innovative performance experiments hybridizing theatre and extended reality (XR) technologies. Conference attendees are invited to don an HMD, embody the character of Stephen Dedalus, and engage Buck Mulligan in the famous opening scene of Joyce’s book, situated on the top of the Martello Tower at Sandycove (Dublin). This scene enables individuals to experience a live-action re-enactment of James Joyce’s Ulysses in VR.

Music videos are short films that integrate songs and imagery and are produced for artistic and promotional purposes. Modern music videos apply various media capture techniques and creative postproduction technologies to provide a myriad of stimulating and artistic approaches to audience entertainment and engagement for viewing across multiple devices. Within this domain, volumetric technologies are becoming a popular means of recording and reproducing musical performances for new audiences to access via traditional 2D screens and emergent virtual reality platforms. However, the precise impact of volumetric video in virtual reality music video entertainment has yet to be fully explored from a user’s perspective. Here we show how users responded to volumetric representations of music performance in virtual reality. Our results preliminarily demonstrate how audiences are likely to respond to music videos and offer insight into how future music videos may be developed for different user types. We anticipate our essay as a formative starting point for more sophisticated, interactive music videos that can be accessed and presented via extended-reality technologies.

Virtual reality (VR) technology presents users with virtual environments to experience various interactive, immersive, and imaginary experiences. While traditional perspective-taking exercises rely on the participant to imagine a self-other merging process to feel connected with other people (typically using second and third-person narrative perspectives), VR can allow an individual to embody an other through first-person narratives delivered via multimodal – visual, aural, haptic – technology-mediated experiences. This process enables users to perceptually and effectively portal into somebody else's body, where they can potentially see, hear, and feel from the point of view of the protagonist and control choices on their behalf in real-time. This article explores the use of VR as an ‘empathy-making machine’ by facilitating perspective-taking and allowing users to experience another person's circumstances. An experiment was performed to compare two different types of perspective-taking VR applications. Levels of empathy, oneness, and attitudes towards a protagonist or focus group within VR materials were captured. Participants then identified the elements of the VR content that contributed to a quality experience. These measures were used to discuss methodologies and techniques for creating quality empathy-building techniques. The findings of this research will be used to inform future creative technology projects presented in VR.

This workshop will provide iLRN 2020 delegates with an opportunity to extend their knowledge of shared immersive virtual environments (IVEs) in the context of teaching and learning through co-creation. The workshop will begin by outlining methods for capturing digital media in-situ, establishing the ‘ground truth’ of a place as both teaching preparation and as a learning activity in its own right. The workshop will then demonstrate how data captured in physical locations can be incorporated into online 3D models that can be experienced as a ‘virtual field trip’ in social virtual reality (VR). This activity highlights the student’s constitutive role in the selection and capture of data representing their environment and encourages active learning through engagement with the creation of IVEs. Workshop participants will be taken on a virtual expedition into one such model to stimulate further discussion about how these environments can be used to promote active learning. While the session focuses on the use of captured media to establish the ground truth of a location, the session will also consider the further potential of social IVEs as opportunities for storytelling, repositories of shared experience, and as a means for imagining and experimenting with counter-factual histories and alternative futures.

City dashboards are increasingly becoming a tool of urban management and governance, used by administrations to monitor key urban metrics and the performance of services and policy. To date, however, there has been little research done from a users perspective of what constitutes a good or bad city dashboard and to establish essential user-centered design principles. In this foundational study, we examine four city dashboards with respect to their design, content, usability, and utility as experienced by existing dashboard users. The study presented was undertaken using a protocol analysis that elicited verbal reports through concurrent think-aloud sessions. In addition, critical incident technique procedures were followed to collect interaction data of critical significance to the users. A content analysis was then conducted on transcripts from these sessions. The research identified specific areas of concern to current dashboard users and led to the creation of new and informed guidelines for producing a dashboard system for Dublin, Ireland.