multi-user communication and interaction in a virtual world

Multi-user communication and interaction in a virtual world

Rhodes university, 2001Supervisor : Prof. Shaun Bangay

Project Aims:

• Investigate how to put together a multi-user environment

• Have volunteers test the environment

• Analyze data from tests

Methodology – The Experiment

Need :• A situation that needs people to

communicate in order to solve it• Something simple that will take

about 10 min. • Must have different stages that we

can compare.

Methodology – The Experiment cont.

The proposed experiment:• Water bucket that needs to be

used to fill a bucket on a seesaw.

Seesaw Buckets

Characters Water

Methodology – The Environment

• Choose travel technique.

Quake strafe style

with mouse look

Rotating style

Vs.

Methodology – The Environment cont.

• Bendable character meshes.

Vs.

Flexible mesh Rigid mesh

Methodology – The Environment cont.Required character movements. • Walk (from sea to seesaw.)• Pick up object.• Carry an object.

Walking

Picking up an object

Carrying an object

Methodology – The Environment cont.

Objects required to fulfill the needs of the experiment.

• Water (sea.)• Buckets.• Seesaw.• Particle spray system (leak in

bucket.)

Water object (part of GD)

Seesaw objectParticle spray

Bucket object

Design considerations

• Eventmanager

Client Eventmanager

Server EventmanagerKeyboardTravel

Seesaw

Character

Client Eventmanager

Seesaw

Design considerations cont.

• Simple collision detection (only in one plane)

Within quad

Within radius

Object

Collision Boundary

Sound component

• Problem – You can only open the sound device once, and send one stream of data to it.

/dev/dsp

MultiChannelInterface

Eventmanager

AudioIOInterface

network

Results

Experiment• 3 people / game• 15 volunteers• 5 games

Results cont.

• Experiment analysis: Speech frequency vs time

time/[s]

Get buckets Filling Seesaw bucketFigure out what to do

Speech frequency vs time

time/[s]

Get buckets All 3 Fill Seesaw bucket

1 Person Fills Seesaw bucket

Results cont.

• Significant questionnaire results:

How clear was sound quality – Understandable 3/5How often did you speak

Beginning - Little to Normal 2.6/5Filling buckets - Little 2/5After killing the dino. - Little 2/5

How effective was communication – Ok to Easy to interact 3.5/5

How realistic did the game feel – What I expected 3/5How easy was it to navigate - Better or the same as other

games 4/5

The end.

Questions ?