Effective Replays and Summarization of Virtual Experiences

Abstract

Direct replays of the experience of a user in a virtual environment are difficult for others to watch due to unnatural camera motions. We present methods for replaying and summarizing these egocentric experiences that effectively communicate the users observations while reducing unwanted camera movements. Our approach summarizes the viewpoint path as a concise sequence of viewpoints that cover the same parts of the scene. The core of our approach is a novel content dependent metric that can be used to identify similarities between viewpoints. This enables viewpoints to be grouped by similar contextual view information and provides a means to generate novel viewpoints that can encapsulate a series of views. These resulting encapsulated viewpoints are used to synthesize new camera paths that convey the content of the original viewers experience. Projecting the initial movement of the user back on the scene can be used to convey the details of their observations, and the extracted viewpoints can serve as bookmarks for control or analysis. Finally we present performance analysis along with two forms of validation to test whether the extracted viewpoints are representative of the viewers original observations and to test for the overall effectiveness of the presented replay methods.

Online real-time presentation of virtual experiences forexternal viewers

“…For example, Pothier et al used real-time image stabilization and augmented reality eyewear in the treatment of Oscillopsia for patients with bilateral vestibular loss [17]. Unfortunately, these types of image stabilization techniques generally do not handle the high-frequency movements of egocentric data gracefully [16]. …”

“…Christie et al provide a survey paper outlining these various techniques [3]. The major motivation of our work comes from Ponto et al who were able to show that egocentric viewpoints could be processed in order to create replay videos that were more effective at communicating participants’ experiences in virtual environments for outside observers [16]. The authors’ method decoupled the egocentric viewpoint from the replay camera path in order to minimize the camera movement and more effectively place the camera.…”

“…The authors’ method decoupled the egocentric viewpoint from the replay camera path in order to minimize the camera movement and more effectively place the camera. Salient camera positions were determined using clustering by comparing viewpoints using a content dependent Viewpoint Similarty metric [16]. The authors demonstrated that their methods were able to outperform simple filtering techniques in terms of their ability to convey content.…”

“…In these cases, the traditional means in which viewers can gain an understanding of the user’s experience is through the replication of the user’s egocentric perspective. Unfortunately, this egocentric view is often difficult to watch as it is filled with movements that feel unnatural and unmotivated to an outside viewer [16]. …”

Implementation of Interactive Web 3D Based Virtual Educational System using O3D-WebGL

“…Web based interactive virtual educational environment is an important method that can be used to replace the off-line education. Rapid technological advances are prompting Web contents to make a transition from 2D to 3D in order to enhance satisfaction for the users [1][2][3][4][5]. Recently, research works on Web 3D based e-learning system for healthcare education have also been extensively conducted [6][7][8].…”