Representation Of Virtual Environment Research Articles

Virtual skeletons and digital muscles: an experimental bioarchaeological approach to the pre-Hispanic production of millstones (Tenerife, Canary Islands)

Highlights: The combination of biomechanical analysis and open-access Kinovea software enables the study of musculoskeletal and articular wear of experimentally reproduced tasks. The repeated use of the right arm during indirect percussion and abrasion in lithic production could increase the changes in bone robusticity of specific muscle attachments observed in the osteoarchaeological record. Motion ranges and postural angles analysis can generate more accurate representations of "virtual humans" in their archaeological context. Abstract: Understanding the physical impact of ancient labours has become an important experimental bioarchaeology area. Complex motion capture systems and digital tools have been used in biomechanical analysis during the reproduction of manual tasks. However, these systems are costly, so the researchers have explored alternative digital solutions. Therefore, the open-access Kinovea software was checked to confirm its reliability in characterizing the physical loads associated with particular works of ancient times. In this case study, the authors have analyzed the central postural angles and muscle chains involved in the indigenous manufacturing process of rotary stone mills, in the high mountains of Tenerife. The study included a virtual motion capture analysis carried out during the different phases of the experimental reproduction of this process; it was defined from the archaeological record of the quarries-workshops of Las Cañadas del Teide National Park (Canary Islands, Spain) volcanic millstones. The results of this study have demonstrated the software's effectiveness to virtually analyze the significant differences in posture between work techniques, observing a predominance of the use of m. biceps brachii, the m. brachioradialis, and the elbow joint during the manufacture of stone mills. On the other hand, Kinovea also has excellent potential in virtual archaeology, giving users tools to generate the average postural angles. As a result, building "virtual skeletons" in more precise work postures has been possible. This may serve as the base element to create complete body representations in virtual environments.

Use of geodesign tools for visualisation of scenarios for an ecologically sensitive area at a local scale

This study presents methods to create past, recent and alternate scenarios for an ecologically sensitive and development prone area in a sub-tropical coastal spit. A variety of geodesign tools were used for creating interactive 3d representations of the digital earth at a local scale. The geodesign tools included existing and archived high-resolution active and passive remote sensing datasets, existing, derived and digitised spatial layers together with products of procedural modelling. The 3d representations in virtual environments of different scenarios were further converted to a diverse variety of digital formats to enable their visualisation across diverse media that included interactive 3d scenes in geographical information systems (GIS), interactive web scenes on web browsers (desktops and smart devices), fly-through in generic movie formats and real 3d visualisation in the CAVE2 environment. This study discusses the utility of all the resources for planning curriculum and the potential of these resources to facilitate an understanding of alternate scenarios for citizens, stakeholders and new learners. Finally, this study evaluates sources while critically discussing openly shared resources in the context of collaborative planning with citizens, educators, students and planners.

Lessons from research on interaction with virtual environments

Nowadays, virtual environments provide great potential for new applications. However, the management and interaction with virtual environments raises new open problems. In this sense, this paper discusses important ideas and findings from research on interaction with virtual environments and virtual agents which we think are relevant for the design of successful virtual environments. More concretely, the paper discusses three aspects which are the representation of virtual environments, navigation support and addition of life to the environments. For each theme we introduce and discuss relevant work. In the view of the work discussed, we also provide recommendations to guide the design and development of virtual environments.

Spatial Mental Representations in Virtual Environments

Spatial mental representations learned by the study of maps are thought to be orientation specific. Studies have shown that people have difficulty in making judgments from an orientation which is different from the orientation of the map itself. It has been hypothesized that such alignment effects can be attributed to differences in the number of viewpoints encountered during learning. The current study used virtual environments to test this hypothesis. Participants were presented several objects located on a plain within an immersive virtual environment. They learned the environment to a criterion level. The critical task for all experiments was to judge the accuracy with which subjects could identify correct triads of object layouts as well as the response latency to make the judgment. The results of the first experiment showed a linear increase in judgment time as the amount of normalization required of the stimulus increased thus supporting the multiple views theory. The results of the second experiment suggested that four viewpoints were needed for simple spacial configurations before orientation specificity could be eliminated.