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Item Bridging the Distance in Education: Design and Implementation of a Synchronous, Browser-Based VR Remote Teaching Tool(The Eurographics Association, 2024) Pehlic, Abdulmelik; Augsdörfer, Ursula; Sousa Santos, Beatriz; Anderson, EikeThe rapid shift to remote education has presented numerous challenges for educators and students alike. Virtual Reality (VR) has emerged as a promising solution, offering immersive and interactive learning experiences. We design and implement a synchronous, browser-based VR teaching tool. The tool is compatible with budget VR equipment and enables meaningful engagement between teachers and students in a virtual setting, as well as active participation and interaction across a range of platforms, thus solving a range of disadvantages of current approaches.Item A Research Methodology Course in a Game Development Curriculum(The Eurographics Association, 2024) Hu, Yan; Sundstedt, Veronica; Goswami, Prashant; Sousa Santos, Beatriz; Anderson, EikeResearch methodology courses can often be considered part of a computer science curriculum. These basic or advanced-level courses are taught in terms of traditional research methods. This paper presents and discusses a research methodology course curriculum for students studying programs focusing on digital game development (more specifically, focusing on game engineering). Our research methodology course prepares students for their upcoming thesis by encouraging a research-oriented approach. This is done by exploring new research areas in game engineering as a basis for research analysis and by applying research methods practically in a smaller project. This paper presents the course structure, assignments, and lessons learned. Together with existing literature, it demonstrates important aspects to consider in teaching and learning game research methodologies. The course evaluation found that the students appreciated the interactive lectures, close staff supervision, and detailed feedback on the scientific writing process.Item Gaming to Learn: A Pilot Case Study on Students Acceptance of Playing Video Games as a Learning Method(The Eurographics Association, 2024) Nisiotis, Louis; Sousa Santos, Beatriz; Anderson, EikeThis paper presents a case study on playing video games as a method to support the delivery of a game development University module, describing the teaching methodology and presenting details on a 'gaming' for learning approach to support the module's learning objectives. It presents the formulation of a theoretical framework to evaluate students acceptance of playing video games as a learning method, and the results of a pilot study using a modified Technology Acceptance Model. The results revealed that gaming as a learning activity was positively perceived by students, finding this method engaging and relevant to their learning curriculum, playful, enjoyable, useful, easy to use, with positive attitudes and behavioural intentions to use. This pilot case study serves as a practical example of implementing video games to support learning, preparing the methodology for further research to understand students acceptance, and the effect on learning outcomes and knowledge acquisition.Item Emotional Responses to Exclusionary Behaviors in Intelligent Embodied Augmented Reality Agents(The Eurographics Association, 2024) Apostolou, Kalliopi; Milata, Vaclav; Škola, Filip; Liarokapis, Fotis; Hu, Ruizhen; Charalambous, PanayiotisThis study investigated how interactions with intelligent agents, embodied as augmented reality (AR) avatars displaying exclusionary behaviors, affect users' emotions. Six participants engaged using voice interaction in a knowledge acquisition scenario in an AR environment with two ChatGPT-driven agents. The gaze-aware avatars, simulating realistic body language, progressively demonstrated social exclusion behaviors. Although not statistically significant, our data suggest a post-interaction emotional shift, manifested by decreased positive and negative affect-aligning with previous studies on social exclusion. Qualitative feedback revealed that some users attributed the exclusionary behavior of avatars to system glitches, leading to their disengagement. Our findings highlight challenges and opportunities for embodied intelligent agents, underscoring their potential to shape user experiences within AR, and the broader extended reality (XR) landscape.Item Driller: An Intuitive Interface for Designing Tangled and Nested Shapes(The Eurographics Association, 2024) Butler, Tara; Guehl, Pascal; Parakkat, Amal Dev; Cani, Marie-Paule; Hu, Ruizhen; Charalambous, PanayiotisThe ability to represent not only isolated shapes but also shapes that interact is essential in various fields, from design to biology or anatomy. In this paper, we propose an intuitive interface to control and edit complex shape arrangements. Using a set of pre-defined shapes that may intersect, our ''Driller'' interface allows users to trigger their local deformation so that they rest on each other, become tangled, or even nest within each other. Driller provides an intuitive way to specify the relative depth of different shapes beneath user-selected points of interest by setting their local depth ordering perpendicularly to the camera's viewpoint. Deformations are then automatically generated by locally propagating these ordering constraints. In addition to being part of the final arrangement, some of the shapes can be used as deformers, which can be later deleted to help sculpt the target shapes. We implemented this solution within a sketch-based modeling system designed for novice users.Item Cues to fast-forward collaboration: A Survey of Workspace Awareness and Visual Cues in XR Collaborative Systems(The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2024) Assaf, Rodrigo; Mendes, Daniel; Rodrigues, Rui; Aristidou, Andreas; Macdonnell, RachelCollaboration in extended reality (XR) environments presents complex challenges that revolve around how users perceive the presence, intentions, and actions of their collaborators. This paper delves into the intricate realm of group awareness, focusing specifically on workspace awareness and the innovative visual cues designed to enhance user comprehension. The research begins by identifying a spectrum of collaborative situations drawn from an analysis of XR prototypes in the existing literature. Then, we describe and introduce a novel classification for workspace awareness, along with an exploration of visual cues recently employed in research endeavors. Lastly, we present the key findings and shine a spotlight on promising yet unexplored topics. This work not only serves as a reference for experienced researchers seeking to inform the design of their own collaborative XR applications but also extends a welcoming hand to newcomers in this dynamic field.Item An Overview of Teaching a Virtual and Augmented Reality Course at Postgraduate Level for Ten Years(The Eurographics Association, 2024) Marques, Bernardo; Santos, Beatriz Sousa; Dias, Paulo; Sousa Santos, Beatriz; Anderson, EikeIn recent years, a multitude of affordable sensors, interaction devices, and displays have entered the market, facilitating the adoption of Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR) in various areas of application. However, the development of such applications demands a solid grasp of the field and specific technical proficiency often missing from existing Computer Science and Engineering education programs. This work describes a post-graduate-level course being taught for the last ten years to several Master's Degree programs, aiming to introduce students to the fundamental principles, methods, and tools of VR/AR. The course's main objective is to equip students with the necessary knowledge to comprehend, create, implement, and assess applications using these technologies. This paper provides insights into the course structure, the key topics covered, assessment, as well as the devices, and infrastructure utilized. It also includes a brief overview of various sample practical projects, along the years. Among other reflections, we argue that teaching this course is challenging due to the fast evolution of the field making updating paramount. This maybe alleviated by motivating students to a research oriented approach, encouraging them to bring their own projects and challenges (e.g. related to their Master dissertations). Finally, future perspectives are outlined.Item A Visual Profiling System for Direct Volume Rendering(The Eurographics Association, 2024) Buelow, Max von; Ströter, Daniel; Rak, Arne; Fellner, Dieter W.; Hu, Ruizhen; Charalambous, PanayiotisDirect Volume Rendering (DVR) is a crucial technique that enables interactive exploration of results from scientific computing or computer graphics. Its applications range from virtual prototyping for product design to computer-aided diagnosis in medicine. Although there are many existing DVR optimizations, they do not provide a thorough analysis of memory-specific hardware behavior. This paper introduces a profiling toolkit that enables the extraction of performance metrics, such as cache hit rates and branching, from a compiled GPU-based DVR application. The metrics are visualized in the image domain to facilitate spatial visual analysis. This paper presents a pipeline that automatically extracts memory traces using binary instrumentation, simulates the GPU memory subsystem, and models DVR-specific functionality within it. The profiler is demonstrated using the Octree-Linear Bounding Volume Hierarchy (OLBVH), and the visualized profiling metrics are explained based on the OLBVH implementation. Our discussion demonstrates that optimizing ray traversal for adaptive sampling, cache usage, branching, and global memory access has the potential to improve performance.