A First-Person Perspective Virtual Tour

Mike LundyTim Walsh

Advisor: Professor Mark Claypool

Outline

• Motivation

• Research

• Implementation

• Prototype

• Results

• Further Work

Motivation

• Create a virtual tour application for students to learn about WPI.

• Allow students who could not normally visit WPI to see the campus.

Research

• Static Media– Catalogs– Pamphlets–Web Site

• Interactive Media– Virtual Environments

Implementation

• Game engine– Pyzzle– Custom Engine

• Slides– Digital Pictures vs. Modeled Images

Implementation

• Support Code– XML DTD– Excel to XML– XML to Python

Implementation

• Building Multiplatform Apps–Windows• xmingw

– Linux•LIBS=-Wl,-Bstatic -lSDL_image -lSDL -ltiff -ljpeg -lpng libglib-2.0.a -Wl,-Bdynamic -Wl,-rpath,/usr/lib -lpthread -lm -ldl -lX11 -lXext

Prototype

Results

• User Study– Survey• Ten questions• Three categories

– Distribution• Email• Flier

Results

• Demographics– No students– 7 people visited– 3 people had a tour

• 30 Responses– 4 people under 16– 8 people between 16 and 18– 2 people between 19 and 22– 16 people over 22

Results

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

Spatial Path General

Don't Know

Wrong

Correct

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

Spatial Path General

Don't Know

Wrong

Correct

Pre Survey Post Survey

Further Work

• Improvements– Overlay building names– “You are here” to the map– Scripted content– Action Support

Questions?