Pages 13-14: Modeling & Simulation

Page 13: Mixed Reality: Entertainment & Education

With Entertainment, “the Magic is behind the eyeballs.” The magic of Mixed Reality is sparked through the imagination. The understanding of imagination, story, and play are essential to innovation in all facets of experiential media.

Looks Like a Film, Plays Like a Video Game, and Feels Like a Theme Park.

Talk to the dolphins, train soldiers for urban combat, or fight off rogue robots to save the universe—yesterday’s science fiction is becoming today’s reality in the UCF Modeling and Simulation (M&S) program. In the Media Convergence Laboratory (MCL), one of the M&S laboratories, the students and faculty are advancing the science of Mixed Reality, which is the process of combining virtual (or computer-generated) elements with real, physical surroundings in order to create an illusion of living fantasy. “We want to combine the immersion of a theme park, the action scenes of a motion picture—placed in an interactive venue and played as a video game,” says Christopher Stapleton, director of the MCL. One of the Lab’s newest projects is the “Time Portal” Experimental Movie Trailer, based off of partner MGM’s movies, Stargate and RoboCop, and made possible by the latest Mixed Reality innovations from Canon, Inc. In only six months, the Lab has developed a full, working prototype of this immersive, Mixed Reality experience (pictured above).

UCF and partner Brand Experience Laboratory plan to use the reinvented experiential trailers to augment entertainment marketing for all forms of media—from games to movies to theme parks and merchandise. The experimental trailer combines 3D mixed reality gaming, spherical monitors that provide spectators with a nearly 3D view, and large scale projectors supplied by Elumens, Inc. (another MCL supporter). The whole package is portable, evocative, and affordable (at least, for big-budget films).

The 3D game participants—sporting VR goggles and a modified rifle—shoot the invading aliens as they fly through the Stargate portal and swarm over the full 360 degrees of virtual space. The game thrills the video-game enthusiasts who participate and entertains those people who would rather just watch. Perhaps most importantly, through the process of creating the experiential trailer, the Lab has made breakthroughs in the understanding of imagination, cognition, and humans’ behavioral/emotional responses.

Why Research Film Entertainment?

“Film is a ten-billion dollar industry that drives a 100-billion dollar industry,” says Stapleton. If a film is successful, it can make long-term profits from video games, T-shirts, key chains, posters, and even spin-off TV shows and cartoons. “Media affects all industries—not just entertainment,” explains Stapleton; understanding the entertainment industry has benefits for schools, museums, and military training. All of those industries can benefit not only from the new technology, but also from the innovative ways of using it. “One of the biggest problems with human nature is that we keep using the new technology in old ways,” explains Stapleton, who could never be accused of that sort of Luddism. Stapleton, his lab, and the entire M&S program are radically adapting technology to innovative uses, and inventing some of the most cutting-edge (and down-right fun) experiences in the process.

The MCL is a partnership between College of Arts & Sciences, School of Computer Science, College of Business Administration, and the Institute for Simulation and Training. For more detailed information about this or other exciting MCL projects visit the website, listed below. For information about the M&S program go to www.ist.ucf.edu.

More Information: www.mcl.ucf.edu

Key Faculty:
Christopher Stapleton, Charles E. Hughes, J. Michael Moshell, & Eileen Smith

Page 14: Educating with Digital Media

Virtual Field Trips

Imagine a teacher trying to read a book about the Iditarod to children who have never seen snow, who think that ‘blizzard’ is something you get at Dairy Queen. Imagine a teacher trying to read a book about ‘a day at the farm’ to children who think that ‘ranch’ is only a kind of salad dressing. There is nothing wrong with these children’s intellect or ability to learn. What they lack is the real-world experiences (and hence, vocabulary) necessary to understand the context of their grade-level reading material. To address this need, Jan Cannon-Bowers, Associate Professor in the CREAT Digital Media Program, is currently leading a multi-disciplinary research project—funded by the Metro Orlando Economic Development Commission and the National Science Foundation—to merge educational learning principles with digital media technology to develop ‘virtual field trips’ (VFTs) for these children.

Capitalizing on the beneficial effects of learning through experience, VFTs can provide students with dynamic, authentic experiences in the classroom that can effectively serve as a proxy for their real world knowledge and, thereby, facilitate meaningful learning. Specifically, VFTs represent an innovative curriculum delivery strategy that combines education, modeling and simulation, cinematic storytelling, and gaming principles to create fun, interactive learning adventures, where students are guided through a virtual learning experience to discover new concepts and integrate this knowledge with what they already know. Furthermore, VFTs can be designed to support learning in a variety of educational settings (e.g., K-12 and post-secondary education, workforce development) and across a variety of domains (e.g., language arts, math and science, life skills training).

More Information: virtualfieldtrip.org
Key Faculty: Jan Cannon-Bowers

QUEST 2004

DATE
Spring 2004

CONTACT
Sae Schatz
Arts & Sciences
Academic Promotions
407-823-5164
sae@cs.ucf.edu

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