Complex virtual environments are used for entertainment in the form of games and are also fundamental in training and simulation environments. Apart from the visual representation of reality, these environments, and the interactions occurring between users within them, are a source of a wide variety of data. These data cover interactions such as spatio-temporal positional tracking within 3D virtual environments, to the measurement of physiological responses of users to in game events. Of particular interest are measures of visual complexity, and how these measures might be useful in determining minimum realism for affective virtual environments. This talk will consider these different data types and sources and highlight some active research areas in the analysis and visualisation of this data.
About the speaker: Dr Karen Blackmore is a Senior Lecturer in Computing at the School of Electrical Engineering and Computing, The University of Newcastle, Australia. She received her BIT (Spatial Science) With Distinction and PhD (2008) from Charles Sturt University, Australia. Dr Blackmore is a spatial scientist with research expertise in the modelling and simulation of complex social and environmental systems. Her research interests cover the use of agent-based models for simulation of socio-spatial interactions, and the use of simulation and games for serious purposes. Her research is cross-disciplinary and empirical in nature, and extends to exploration of the ways that humans engage and interact with models and simulations. Before joining the University of Newcastle, Dr Blackmore was a Research Fellow in the Department of Environment and Geography at Macquarie University, Australia and a Lecturer in the School of Information Technology, Computing and Mathematics at Charles Sturt University.
How to participate in this seminar:
To participate remotely, connect to the ViewMe meeting called “carmaspecial” (you can enter that name, or the meeting number 8882491714). This will be persistant for future talks in this series. The ViewMe client is free and you do not need an account. You can install ViewMe on a computer or phone to take part, or use the web interface (Firefox or Chrome) at https://viewme.ezuce.com/webrtc/?meetingID=8882491714. It’s quite easy to use, but for assistance please contact Andrew.Danson@newcastle.edu.au. Some guides are available at https://viewme.ezuce.com/support/guides-tutorials/.
This talk is part of the CARMA Special Semester in Computation and Visualisation.