Immersive Authoring of 360 Degree Interactive Applications

Abstract

Although there are proposals in the literature for authoring mulsemedia ( <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">mul</i> tiple <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">se</i> nsorial <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">media</i> ) applications with 2D content, there are no suitable solutions when it comes to 360° content. Moreover, little consensus on 360° mulsemedia authoring methodology exists. Aiming at filling this gap, we propose the concept of immersive authoring of 360° multisensory applications. Our proposal comprises an immersive 360° authoring environment to bring the author closer to the final user presentation environment. We implemented our proposal in AMUSEVR, a virtual-reality (VR) environment for authoring 360° mulsemedia applications. We see it as an alternative or a possible complement to available 2D mulsemedia authoring tools. AMUSEVR provides creation and editing of interactive multiple sensorial media scenes by directly arranging objects in a 3D space using VR technology. Also, the tool allows users to run their applications through AMUSEVR viewer mode.We used the Goal Question Metric (GQM) approach to plan our tests and a group of users evaluated the tool with the SUS and UEQ questionnaires, obtaining a SUS score of 82.25 and an excellent UEQ benchmark, which are very promising results.