Virtual reality
Topic outline
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Virtual Reality
Presential course in INF2 by R. Boulic with one Lecture by Dr Bruno Herbelin on May 9th(the use of the webinar 668 8117 1531 is limited to the first week)For Q&A about the course, hands-on and the project, use the dedicated channels in the VR Discord serversee the detailed schedule below for the the type of activity during the 10-13h time range
the course plans 5 weeks of VR hands-on with coding work (--2h/week) from weeks 3-4 to 8 of the semester. For this reason, the 1h of exercise from 12h to 13h is used for teaching for the first 2 weeks whereas there will be only 1h of lecture from 10h to 11h during the weeks 4 to 8 period.
The paper study is an individual work done within week2 to 5.
The project starts on week 3 where groups of 3 persons are formed and can retrieve their Oculus Quest HMD(s) ; we have 22 of them (half Oculus Quest and half Quest2) for this spring. The project pitch is planned on week 5 just before the hands-on. The project end on week 13.
GRADING SCHEME
- The paper study grade has a weight of 20% ; you will know your grade before the final oral (see below)
- The programming assignment has a weight of 50%: The project oral evaluation will be conducted in presential if possible
- The short individual theoretical oral control during week 14 has a weight of 30% (on the chosen paper for the paper study + general VR theoretical concepts)) . The theoretical oral exam will be conducted in presential if possible
DETAILED SCHEDULE(2021-22)
- The paper study grade has a weight of 20% ; you will know your grade before the final oral (see below)
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Feb. 21 st [1h course presentation and embodied VR concepts, 2h about Game concepts and testing]
R. Boulic : Course structure including a brief overview of the 4 hands-on demos, the paper study and the small project
R. Boulic : VR as "Embodied Interaction"
N. Tian : Introduction to game design
M. Delahaye: Game: Play testing
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Later this week, you will be able to select the paper you want to study by registering to the "paper study group" with the number of the first authors' name on the first page.
Carefully read the abstracts before choosing a paper as you cannot revert your choice.
You can join only one group => one paper to study (alone) ; it's not a work to do with the potential other person choosing the same paper to study. We'll run the plagiarism detection tool to check such issue. -
reminder: choose MAXIMUM 1 group / the paper study work is individual. The word "group" comes from the moodle interface design ; it just mean the maximum number of person choosing a specific paper.
The Turn-it-in assignment uploading tool will be visible in the TOPIC5 box. According to EPFL regulations, this tool will check for plagiarism on all uploaded assignments including those provided in previous years.
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February 28th [3h teaching] from now on, without webinar ; recorded video from previous year will be visible after the course period
R. Boulic 1h: Feeding human senses through "Immersion"
R. Boulic 1h: Depth Perception
Mathias Delahaye / Nana Tian 1h: VR systems
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March 7th [2h teaching and 1h UNITY intro]
R. Boulic 1h: How much Immersion is necessary ? what is he difference between Immersion and Presence ? and Flow ?
R. Boulic 1h: Cybersickness
Hands-on HO1 Week3-
The game design document is maximum two pages. This is not graded ; it will be used to provide better feedback during the pitch session in week 5.
Please Mark your group_id in the pdf name and your document title.
One person per group make the submission
You should include the following bullet points: Please carefully read updated project guideline_ 2022 for references:
1. Game background description. (e.g. stories (if any), game world (if any))
2. Basic gameplay (e.g. the goal of the game)
3. Game mechanism ( e.g. the core game mechanism, key interactions, etc)
4. Locomotion style.
5. Designs to avoid cybersickness (Optional).
6. Other features (User interface, Sound & Effects).
We recommend that you use drawings or other forms of graphical representation to convey your idea more efficiently.
For the pitch session, please prepare a presentation slide (maximum 5 pages).
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Sign up for pitch Scheduler
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March 14th [1h teaching, 2h TP with own laptop]
R. Boulic 1h: Basic 3D interaction techniques: Magic vs Naturalism (Part1)
Hands-on HO2 Week4
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March 21st [reduced teaching/ focus on the pitch]
R. Boulic : Basic 3D interaction techniques: Magic vs Naturalism [15 min]Mathias/Nana : Project Pitch from 10h38 to 12h50 (sign-up and upload of the game design document is in Topic3) -
March 28 th [1h teaching / 2h TP]
R. Boulic 1h : Basic 3D interaction techniques: Magic vs Naturalism (part 4)
Hands-on Week6
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Please upload a pdf structured as follows :
- 1 page = [min: 2400 , max: 3000] characters including spaces (use text editing tools to count characters)
- Do not copy-paste any piece of text from the paper to study unless you make clear it is a citation (with double quotes).
- you may have one image on page 1, only if it is essential to understand the paper.
- the full reference of the studied paper appears at the beginning of page 3 and is referred to as [0] in page 1 and 2.
- use numbered references like this [1] to spare space on pages 1 and 2.
HEADER : your name + beginning of paper title/only first author/year.
PAGE 1 : this page focuses on the contributions of the paper, highlighting a selection of key earlier papers [min: 2, max: 4] to show how the paper exploits them/ compares to them. At the bottom of the page, provide a 1-2 sentence(s) summary for each of the selected earlier papers. Follow this style :
Paper [1] compares the effectiveness of.... with.... etc....
PAGE 2 : includes your analysis of the citations of this paper by others (e.g. who, why, when) ; first indicate the tool you used and the total number of citations you found. Then make a selection of papers (min 4, max 8) to highlight a VARIETY of cases about how the field has evolved since the paper appeared in publication. Include the most cited paper among this selection. The VARIETY criteria will be assessed as follow:
- no more than 2 references from authors of [0]
- no more than 1 survey/review/book
- time range of the chosen references should spread between [0] publication year and now ; let's note N the number of years since the publication of [0], then a maximum of half of the references should be in the N/2 years that followed the publication of [0].
Provide an explicit subsection "Conclusion" stating your own viewpoint on the past and future evolution of the topic.
PAGE 3 : list of the papers references used for pages 1and 2. For each numbered reference provide the paper title, publication year, author list, source of publication (conference, journal, book), publisher, volume and number (for journal) or chapter (for book), page numbers, and DOI (or a link to the internet location where you found the paper) so that we can find it easily.
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April 4th [1h teaching, the initially planned 2h TP]
R. Boulic 1h : Haptic interfaces (part1 & 2)
Hands-on week7
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April 11 th [1h teaching / 2h TP]
R. Boulic : Haptic Interfaces (part3) / The perception of Action (Part 1/2)
Hands-on HO5 Week8
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April 25 th [2 x 45 min]
R. Boulic : The perception of action (end)
R. Boulic : What makes an interactive virtual human alive (or plain zombies) [part 1/3 & 2/3]?
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May 2 nd [2 x45 min]
R. Boulic: What makes an interactive virtual human alive (or plain zombies) [part 3/3]?R. Boulic: Motion capture for real-time interaction -
May 9 th [2h teaching] invited lecture from Dr Bruno Herbelin
B. Herbelin: Immersive Virtual Reality, Telepresence and their cognitive foundation / Embodied Virtual Reality (course material from B Herbelin from EPFL-LNCO)
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May 16 th: no course / time is dedicated to the mini-project
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May 23rd : Project Public Demo/PlayTesting in INF2 to everybody
This session helps to gather some playtesting feedback from other players that are not members of your group. It will help to refine some aspects before the final upload of the project.
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The deadline for submitting the final version of the project is on May 25 at 23:55.
The submission, only one per group, must contain the build of the game, the sources, the report, and the video of the project.Submission item list:
- Build of the game
We will directly import your builds (i.e., games) in the .apk format to HMDs to evaluate your games. - Sources
We should be able to rebuild your game only based on the sources you provided to us. - Report
It should contain a short synopsis of the game with an illustration of the theme of the game (e.g., a screenshot of a characteristic moment in the game)
Then the report would concisely describe the scenario followed by the interactions (e.g., how to trigger it, what it does, and how it manages to do it with a short description of the implementation, schemas are highly appreciated)
Commands and cheat codes should be summarized in a short table.
A short description of the playtesting session(s) and feedback should also be described (e.g., you can describe interactions you had to change if it was too complicated or tended to induce motion-sickness, who tested your game, what you learned/disliked from participants, etc.)
You can put emphasis on the care you added to the graphics, the sounds, maintaining the theme of the game, or things you believe matter a lot to you while you develop the game.
The report shouldn't be longer than 5 pages (except for exceptional caption)
Finally, you can add short acknowledgments for your playtesters, friends, family, StackOverflow, etc.
Pdf is highly recommended, although .doc or .odt are accepted. - Video of the project
This should be a short video ( <5 mins) showing the core parts of the game
We don't expect a trailer with special effects.
Usual formats are accepted, and if the video is too heavy, it can be submitted as a link in a file to a video-sharing platform.
N.B. Let us know in case you do not want it to be posted on any video-sharing platform in the future (mathias.delahaye@epfl.ch)
Submission methods:- Archive
The submission archive must be a single .zip archive file named 2022_cs444_vr_project_group_XX.zip, where XX is the group number and must contain the following items:
- ./build.apk : the build
- ./sources : the folder containing the unity project (with the code and all assets)
- ./report.pdf : the report
- ./video.mp4 : the video
- EPFL's GitLab
⚠️You must warn us and share the project URL in advance (before May 25 at 20:00) so that we can fork it at the expected deadline.
You must invite us to the project (mdelahay, ntian, boulic, or using emails) as project members with at least the Developer role.
The fork will be performed at the deadline; therefore, changes until then will be taken into account.
(i.e., sending the invite is not the final upload, it does not freeze the state of the project, you can still push changes until the deadline)
The project repository, containing the application code and all assets, must also contain the following items:
- ./build.apk : the build (not within the Build folder as the .gitignore policy would discard it)
- ./report.pdf : the report
- ./video.mp4 : the video
This repository should be named 2022_cs444_vr_project_group_XX, where XX is the group number .
- Build of the game
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May 30th: Final Individual Oral Exams for theory between 8h00 to 13h00 and 13h30 to 18h50 in presential in INJ 141.
May 30th: Project Group Presentation between 8hxx to 11h30/12h00 and 12h30/13h00 to xxh00 in presential in INF2 or another room to be confirmed during week 13.
Given the high number of students, the individual oral on the project code (smoke detector) will be spread during week 14.-
Only the student registered to the course are allowed to fill this form.
The sooner, the more choice for you.