Developing Virtual Storytellers for the Virtual Alhambra
Thanks to the technological advances in the last ten years, the recreation of 3D virtual worlds is becoming increasingly popular in several application fields. Desktop virtual reality is one of the best ways of reaching a good number of users through this
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acultad de Informática. Universidad Politécnica de Madrid Campus de Montegancedo. 28660 - Boadilla del Monte (Madrid). Spain {jfuertes,agonzalez}@fi.upm.es 2 SETIAM. CETTICO. FGUPM. Campus de Montegancedo. 28660 - Boadilla del Monte (Madrid). Spain {gmariscal,cruiz}@cettico.fi.upm.es
Abstract. Thanks to the technological advances in the last ten years, the recreation of 3D virtual worlds is becoming increasingly popular in several application fields. Desktop virtual reality is one of the best ways of reaching a good number of users through this technology. With the aim of improving the development of desktop virtual reality applications and increasing the relevance of the virtual experience, we defined the Virtual Reality Framework (VRF). This framework supports the creation of interactive systems for personalized and group guided tours in virtual worlds. The VRF can incorporate functionalities including context-sensitive information that a virtual guide will tell a user or group of users in a personalized manner. User interaction with the environment and with the intelligent virtual guides will lead to changes in the story told during the tour. In this paper we describe the Virtual Alhambra Project, which was the project that brought the VRF into being. Keywords: Virtual Reality, Virtual Tourism, Virtual Storyteller, Interactive Storytelling.
1 Introduction There are many monuments and sites of outstanding beauty on our planet. There is more than one way of experiencing and delighting in the charm of these sites. Visiting the monument in person is evidently the most impressive, but it is not always possible. When this is out of the question, videoed documentaries or photographic reports are a good option if you are looking for realism and an exact representation of the monument. The problem with this second option is that you have no control over what you can or cannot see, and even the order in which the images are viewed is programmed in videos. Additionally, if you have a question about the video you are watching, how do you find an answer? How can you gain access to the extra information? Thanks to technological progress, there has, for some time now, been an alternative way of visiting these beauty spots: virtual recreations of the sites [1]. Virtual recreation has a number of advantages over the use of videos and photos. For example, you can interact with the monument or decide what part of and in what order you would like to visit the site. Also visitor interaction with the environment is improved by giving users real-time access to information about the elements that M. Cavazza and S. Donikian (Eds.): ICVS 2007, LNCS 4871, pp. 63–74, 2007. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007
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prick their curiosity. There are some interesting initiatives, like the Louvre Museum’s exhibition rooms [2] or SecondLife [3], a 3D virtual world built and owned entirely by its residents. To achieve an interactive virtual experience [4], the interactive capability of the environment needs to be used to
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