Helmut Hlavacs

• Professor
• Professor at University of Vienna

Introduction New technologies have great potential to facilitate students’ understanding and appreciation of one of the most abstract and challenging school subjects – physics. This study aimed to examine the effects of a game-based virtual reality teaching method on secondary school students’ self-beliefs, interest, and performance in physics thro...

According to the Dialogical Self Theory, there is a multiplicity of I-positions within the self in a dialogical relationship. Psychodrama refers to these positions as inner parts within the self. We propose an integration of both to create an intervention centered on unscripted intrapersonal role-playing of the I-positions for the purpose of meanin...

We present LUDIK, a serious game project for pediatric haemato-oncological patients, including 5 differently scoped mini-games, designed to produce interpretable game score data. A playable game client and the overall system approach were evaluated by children of the target age group through a survey. Our results indicate clear acceptance of the ge...

This study intends to explore the hedonic consumption experience factors comprising imaginal, emotional, and sensory that make statistically difference while comparing multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game users with Vride users. We collected two separate data sets including MOBA game users (292) and Vride Users (217). We performed t-test to...

The following work explores and compares the differences between rendering fire and smoke simulations in high resolution vs rendering these same simulations in low resolution and using deep learning based neural networks to up-scale the output via super-resolution. Several simulations are created at different levels of detail, both with and without...

Debate on violent games and their effect on aggressive behavior remains inconclusive. This study aims to study the predicting role of cognitive, affective, and behavioral engagement states in violent videogames on aggressive behavior, which remains nebulous to date. We visited gaming zones and administered the study survey to collect data from viol...

Digital games have over the past few years have become increasingly important, particularly during Covid-19 lockdowns, not just as a way to spend free time but also in many more serious fields. One such area is healthcare, where applied games are increasingly utilized to educate individuals and encourage compliance with health measures, such as vac...

An increase in public interest in the utilisation of virtual reality headsets has led to many technological advancements in this area. Two of the fields that could potential profit from these advancements are psychology research and phobia therapy. One of the main challenges in using virtual reality in these scenarios is the application creation pr...

This research investigates the factors that affect male gamers' behavioral intention to play PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG), which is one of the most widely played online games of today's era. We examine the factors through the lens of the hedonic consumption model (i.e., playful-consumption experiences) and use the gratification theory to pr...

This study investigates whether there exist personality differences between consumers of videogames and non-consumers of videogames. This is explored through the HEXACO model, which derives HEXACO scores indicative of a particular personality profile. The model assesses the dimensions of honesty-humility, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness,...

Our goal is to test the capability of deep learning for compressing the size of video files, e.g., for sending them over digital networks. This is done by extracting keypoint and affine transformation tensors, using a pre-trained face model and then reducing the data by quantization and compression. This minimal information is sent through a networ...

We propose an automatic framework for toll collection, consisting of three steps: vehicle type recognition, license plate localization, and reading. However, each of the three steps becomes non-trivial due to image variations caused by several factors. The traditional vehicle decorations on the front cause variations among vehicles of the same type...

One of the key problems for researchers and network managers is anomaly detection in network traffic. Anomalies in network traffic might signal a network intrusion, requiring the use of a quick and dependable network intrusion detection system. Intrusion detection systems based on artificial intelligence (AI) techniques are gaining the interest of...

Depression, coupled with a cancer diagnosis in early childhood, often leads toward disinclination to psychotherapy, especially in children. However, a possible remedy could be found in video games that could reduce the depressive condition. This study investigates two games and our results show that the ability of therapy embedded game (3D-GIT) is...

Background Video games are expanding exponentially with their increased popularity among users. However, this popularity has also led to an increase in reported video game addiction. There may be consumer engagement–related factors that may influence video game addiction. Objective This study aims to empirically examine the impact of the dimension...

This study proposes a conceptual model that establishes a relationship between engagement with gamified applications, and its impact on a user’s quality of life (QoL). Since gamification is rapidly gaining popularity therefore the use of such applications has become a norm. Subjective quality of life is a mental state or an individual’s awareness o...

Background Although the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) constitutes a valid paradigm for social stress induction, less is known about the effects of a virtual reality (VR) TSST on short- and long-term hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and sympathetic-adreno-medullar (SAM) axis responses. Hence, this study set out to evaluate reactivity and...

Identifying and addressing usability issues is a vital part of improving player experiences in games. This paper delves into different methods that can be applied to shortlist usability issues in games. We specifically discuss observational studies, think-aloud protocols, questionnaires, surveys, user interviews, focus groups, and heuristic evaluat...

Research from the various domain of life intensely focused on the understanding of the role of different psychological factors related to online video game addiction. The current study intends to propose a conceptual model to examines the relationship of in-game virtual consumption with online video game addiction. Different in-game virtual product...

The exclusion of impaired people from various areas of life is undeniable, leisure and entertainment (including games) being definitely among them. The paper focuses on the research of the current state of accessibility in gaming, non-mental disabilities (grouped into visual, auditory and physical) and the ways of compensating for them in real life...

Hand-coded finite-state machines and behavior trees are the go-to techniques for artificial intelligence (AI) developers that want full control over their character's bearing. However, manually crafting behaviors for computer-controlled agents is a tedious and parameter-dependent task. From a high-level view, the process of designing agent AI by ha...

BACKGROUND Video games are expanding exponentially with their increased popularity among users. However, this popularity has also led to an increase in reported video game addiction. There may be consumer engagement–related factors that may influence video game addiction. OBJECTIVE This study aims to empirically examine the impact of the dimension...

This study aims to investigate the impact of personality dimensions on consumer videogame engagement. We distributed the study questionnaire to gamers aged 16-19 years and managed to get three-hundred-and-eighty valid respondents who provided data in the form of a self-report using HEXACO-100 items and consumer videogame engagement constructs. Warp...

While ostracism constitutes a social stressor with negative effects on physical and mental health, social inclusion seems to increase resilience. This may be true not only for face-to-face settings, but also for computer-mediated interactions. Hence, this study examined the differences between ostracism and social inclusion in real-life or Virtual...

UNSTRUCTURED Depression, coupled with a cancer diagnosis in early childhood, often leads toward disinclination to psychotherapy, especially in children. However, an effective remedy could be found in video games that could reduce the depressive condition. The study investigates the efficacy of therapy embedded games (3D-GIT) against the simple ment...

The study aims to investigate the factors that contribute to children’s subjective well-being. We used playful-consumption experiences in children’s smartphone usage to determine their subjective well-being. In total, 210 valid responses were obtained from the parents and analyzed using PLS-SEM in SmartPLS 3.2.8. The results of the measurement mode...

Pop-up ads in online gaming is an emerging phenomenon on the internet that provide massive opportunities for business enterprises. Despite its importance for any businesses, do gamers get inspired by pop-up ads? To answer the query, we develop the conceptual model predicting customer inspiration through perceived advertisement value of pop-up ads i...

Serious games have been successfully implemented in many fields in recent years. Along the way, the call for audience specific solutions rose within the game community. In the course of a project focusing on fostering social media literacy among adolescents, we have developed a design for a serious game tailored to this specific age group. We prese...

Based on the well known SIR model, this paper develops a model for predicting the number of necessary testings of asymptomatic persons in order to push Reff below 1, thus suppressing an outbreak. The model considers R0, time for obtaining a test result, and effect of population discipline. The outcome are closed form expressions for the number of d...

Building realistic living cities with people inside is useful for many applications like movies, computer games, and virtual reality (VR). However, algorithms that produce (i.e., procedurally generate) endless realistic cities are still scarce when simulating big cities. In this paper, we report on research that explores the design of a city genera...

Studies have shown that gamification increases motivation and user experience when it comes to a certain behavior or completing a process. Gamification is often deeply associated with naïve animations and stylized text. This paper addresses the effect that visual representation has on the motivation of a subject by measuring their motivation after...

BACKGROUND A growing number of cancer and hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) survivors require long-term follow-up with optimal communication schemes and patients' compliance is crucial. Adolescents and young adults (AYA, age 12-39 years) have various unmet needs. Regarding self-report of symptoms/health status mobile applications (mApp) sho...

Background: A growing number of cancer and hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) survivors require long-term follow-up with optimal communication schemes, and patients' compliance is crucial. Adolescents have various unmet needs. Regarding self-report of symptoms and health status, users of mobile apps showed enhanced compliance. Currently, HS...

We present a method for procedurally creating game worlds, in our case levels for playing zombie survival games. The aim is to randomly create new levels that present new challenges to players, are fun, and “work” as game levels, i.e. look like levels that have been hand crafted. We create the topology, paths to follow, random houses, and hordes of...

In this paper we present a novel VR-based tool for the treatment of anxiety disorders for children and adolescents. The tool consists of a photo-realistic VR game, together with a biofeedback device, and a second screen for enabling interventions for the practitioner. We describe the tool, how we measure and use biofeedback, and evaluate the sense...

It has been a long time since the colonization of Mars was only a point of discussion in science fiction. Today, with the omnipresent topic of the climate change, some people picture Mars as a viable alternative to Earth. This paper describes the major challenges of living on Mars, and explains the implementation of a virtual reality experience on...

Based on an emerging need for automated AI generation, we present a machine learning approach to generate behavior trees controlling NPCs in a “Capture the Flag” game. After discussing the game’s mechanics and rule set, we present the implemented logic and how trees are generated. Subsequently, teams of agents controlled by generated trees are matc...

In the presented study, the informative content of health data of a handwritten health diary was compared with health data submitted through a serious game. Physicians are able to derive a better and more complete health status of patients with higher informative content in health reports. The serious game was implemented in the project Interacct,...

In this paper a new method for diminished reality is explored, which uses a 3D model of a room to fill in missing regions when removing objects in real time on a video. The room is scanned before, so it is possible to recreate missing pieces in all their detail. The proposed method allows freedom in movement and rotation and is demonstrated with an...

Virtual cities as background scenarios can be used for many 3D video game genres like action. However, the procedural generation of virtual cities for specific video game genres is an on-going research problem. In this paper, we seek to establish a grounding for future work into city generation for specific game genres by exploring how game designe...

Background and objective As social interactions increasingly shift towards digitally mediated communications, understanding the underlying mechanisms of virtually provided support and its effect on stress buffering is of central importance. Thus, this study's objective was to assess, whether a virtual character's (avatar vs. agent) attentive and (n...

This study aims to empirically investigate a conceptual model that is nested in a behaviorism paradigm. The model posits that consumer videogame engagement is triggered through the playful-consumption experience of a digital game. To validate the model, this study collected data from 460 teen videogame users which were subsequently analyzed on usin...

Abstract. This study aims to empirically investigate a conceptual model that is nested in a behaviorism paradigm. The model posits that consumer videogame engagement is triggered through the playful-consumption experience of a digital game. To validate the model, this study collected data from 460 teen videogame users which were subsequently analyz...

This study aims to empirically investigate a conceptual model that is nested in a behaviorism paradigm. The model posits that consumer videogame engagement is triggered through the playful-consumption experience of a digital game. To validate the model, this study collected data from 460 teen videogame users which were subsequently analyzed on usin...

This study proposes and validates a conceptual model for predicting consumer video game engagement, comprising cognitive, affective, and behavioural engagement originating from the imaginal, emotional, and sensory playful-consumption experience. To validate the conceptual model, data were collected from 465 teen video game consumers; 436 were usabl...

Although social anxiety disorders (SADs) are increasingly treated by means of virtual cue exposure, the mechanisms leading to sufficient anxiety levels and thus to a success of virtual reality exposure therapy are still poorly understood. Also, most studies with SAD participants fail to evaluate social presence, although it may be a more appropriat...

Background and objectives: Face-to-face and text-based social support have been shown to attenuate stress responses in past studies. Yet as social interactions increasingly take place online by means of virtual humans, our objective was to examine whether different forms of social support (virtual vs. real) prior to the Trier Social Stress Test (T...

In the recent years a handful of powerful game engines have been released for easing the production of high quality computer games, e.g. Unity 3D or Unreal 4. Since these engines are free of charge for amateurs, their use has increased worldwide drastically, enabling small teams to create high quality games rapidly. However, for blind people, no su...

The present study intends to develop a conceptual model predicting videogame consumers’ observational learning that is initiated through the playful-consumption experience of a digital game. To meet this objective, authors employed the hedonic theory of consumption experience and observational learning theory to propose a conceptual model demonstra...

The present study intends to develop a conceptual model predicting videogame consumers’ observational learning that is initiated through the playful-consumption experience of a digital game. To meet this objective, authors employed the hedonic theory of consumption experience and observational learning theory to propose a conceptual model demonstra...

We explore ways of removing objects from live video feeds in augmented reality-like use cases, using a method for inpainting unwanted objects using previously captured visuals of the surrounding environment. In contrast to related previous work, this approach can completely retain and reproduce hidden objects in all their detail. We describe the ap...

The reconstruction and visualization of three-dimensional point-cloud models, obtained by terrestrial laser scanners, is interesting to many research areas. This paper presents an algorithm to decimate redundant information in real-world indoor point-cloud scenes. The key idea is to recognize planar segments from the point-cloud and to decimate the...

Different solutions present the usage of bicycles with Head Mounted Display (HMD) in which virtual scenarios are visualized as background for athletes training or as cardiac patient rehabilitation systems. However, assessments on presence, degrees of immersion and user involvement with real bicycles in those virtual scenarios still are rare. In thi...

While virtual humans are increasingly used to benefit the elderly, considerably little is still known about older adults' virtual experiences. However, due to age-related changes, older adults' perceptions of virtual environments (VEs) may be unique. Hence, our objective was to examine possible gender differences in immersion, flow, and emotional s...

Elderly people today often keep contact with their friends and relatives through modern means like email. However, email smartphone apps are often quite difficult to operate, confusing their elderly users with too many options or showing erratic behavior due to mistakes in complex swipe gestures. We developed the app MuMail especially for elderly u...

We present the INTERACCT system, a smartphone app and a Web page for fostering communication between young patients in aftercare after a stem cell transplantation. In this phase of rehabilitation, daily communication between the patients and their clinicians is key for detecting upcoming possibly deadly crises as early as possible. The app consists...

Cloud computing follows a layered architecture where each layer targets a particular domain of end users. In such a layered architecture, provenance (the metadata that describes the derivation history of the object) of the individual layers is of significant importance to establish trust and authenticity. In a typical Cloud environment, each layer...

Given the increasing use of virtual characters, research is challenged to gain sufficient knowledge on the effects they may have on human cognitions, emotions and behaviors. Thus, this study set out to examine social avoidance tendencies and prosocial behaviors towards human controlled (avatars) and computer controlled entities (agents). A total of...

The present study explores persuasive and interventional strategies for designing and evaluating low-threshold browser games that adequately aim for affording prejudice-reducing social impact in everyday life scenarios. Our investigation was guided by the premise that a covert persuasion approach is suited for also reaching out to otherwise adverse...

InvisibleSound is a mobile application software developed for blind people to compose music. The app’s handling is adapted to the needs and requirements of blind people. As a control mechanism to navigate through the app’s functions we tested two modes: a common swipe control and an interactive motion control by moving the phone. Also publishing an...

This paper intends to develop a scale to measure a videogame player’s emotional, sensory, and imaginal experiences in digital gaming. We first define the construct of playful-consumption experience in videogame playing and accordingly, develop a scale for measuring playful experiences in videogames. We collected the data of 225 valid respondents wh...

In human culture, storytelling is a long-established tradition. The reasons people tell stories are manifold: to entertain, to transfer knowledge between generations, to maintain cultural heritage, or to warn others of dangers. With the emergence of the digitisation of media, many new possibilities to tell stories in serious and non-entertainment c...

In order to empower the influence and usage of Serious Games for Health (SGFH) in science as well as application, a decision-support-system (DSS) based approach for interpreting game data should be developed. This DSS would allow users (patients, physicians) to interpret medical data, gathered by various serious games, as well as the game-scores of...

On the one hand, creating rich virtual worlds "by hand" like in the game Grand Theft Auto V is hugely expensive and limited to large studios. On the other hand, procedural content generation (PCG) allows tiny teams to create huge worlds like Hello Games did with only four people (in the beginning) for the recently released game No Man's Sky. Follow...

Cloud computing is a recent tendency in IT that moves computing and data away from desktop and hand-held devices into large scale processing hubs and data centers respectively. It has been proposed as an effective solution for data outsourcing and on demand computing to control the rising cost of IT setups and management in enterprises. However, wi...

Files of different size and format. Files in the Dataset are utilized for performance measurement. (ZIP)

Relevance & Research Question: Racism and sexism are amongst the currently most relevant problems in our society. News present on a daily basis the cruel results of power ideas, “us-vs-them concepts”, together with intense emotions, taboo, distancing and avoidance behavior (eg Diller, 2011). Defensive behaviors can easily be observed in daily life,...

The aim of the study is to develop a new instrument to measure engagement in videogame play termed as consumer videogame engagement. The study followed the scale development procedure to develop an instrument to measure the construct of consumer videogame engagement. In this study, we collected the data in two different phases comprising study 1 (...

The concept of social exclusion has recently gained more attention in the context of online social interactions. However, there is only little data regarding the impact of virtual social exclusion on subsequent real-life social behaviors. Thus, this study set out to examine a virtual version of the common social exclusion scenario, the Cyberball-Pa...

Racism and sexism are amongst the currently most relevant problems in our society. News present on a daily basis the cruel results of power ideas, “us-vs-them concepts”, together with intense emotions, taboo, distancing and avoidance behavior (eg Diller, 2011). Defensive behaviors can easily be observed in daily life, the underlying racism and/or...

In light of the rather limited ecological validity of paradigms traditionally used for social stress research, the current paper set out to introduce virtual analogues of the Cyberball-Game (Williams 2007) and the Trier Social Stress Test (Kirschbaum, Pirke, and Hellhammer 1993). Both were tested in samples of healthy adults using salivary cortisol...

This research article attempts to conceptualize and operationalize the concept of engagement in videogame-play as consumer videogame engagement that comprises both psychological and behavioral dimensions. Accordingly, this study has developed a scale for measuring consumer videogame engagement through following the steps of scale development. Next,...

The aim of the study is to propose a conceptual model which predicts consumer videogame engagement triggered by the playful-consumption experience of videogame-play. The proposed conceptual model is based on a review of past literature on experience and engagement in videogame studies. Moreover, this study employs the hedonic theory of consumption...

Interference between co-located VMs may lead to performance fluctuations and degradation, especially in overbooked datacenters. To limit this problem, VMs access to physical resources needs to be controlled to ensure certain degree of isolation among them. However, the mapping between virtual and physical resources must be performed in a dynamic wa...

Public speaking is a well-known psychosocial stress to occur in social-evaluative situations. This study examined self-reported, autonomic and endocrine stress responses to a 5-min public speaking task. Participants were asked to present either in front of i) a real audience, or ii) a virtual audience or iii) an empty virtual lecture hall. Thus, th...

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 15th InternationalConference on Entertainment Computing, ICEC 2016, held in Vienna, Austria, in September 2016. The 16 full papers, 13 short papers, and 2 posters presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 46 submissions. The multidisciplinary nature of entertainment computing is reflec...

Dynamic virtual machine consolidation strategies refer to a number of resource management algorithms aiming at finding the right balance between energy consumption and SLA violations by using live migration techniques in virtualized cloud data centers. Most strategies found in the literature typically focus on centralized approaches, with a single...

The increasing use of multicopters and other unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) systems has caused the need for appropriate security measures. Such measures are usually country-specific and differ significantly from each other. In Europe, several national aviation regularities have implemented national registration processes whose non-compliance constit...

We describe the design process and implementation of the serious game MindSpace. MindSpace provides a playful setting for treating children with a variety of social and specific anxiety disorders. A modular approach is explained, taking a closer look on cognitive-behavioral techniques such as exposure tasks, psycho-education or coping techniques an...

Serious games are digital games and simulations designed for specific purposes beyond pure entertainment. Serious purposes are, for example, raising awareness about environmental and social issues, persuading gamers to change their lives or the lives of others through social innovation, or games for learning, training and education. However, enterta...

Children who are treated with hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) are hospitalized for many weeks or even months. Discharge to home is important but sufficient home care is essential. Beside regular physical and laboratory checks in the outpatient clinic, information on the daily health status is mandatory for early detection of possible...

Smartphone-based applications are increasingly being used to combat unhealthy habits resulting in obesity or reduced physical mobility. In turn, gamification has been identified as a useful tool to motivate individuals towards behavioural change. However, both health professionals and game developers are currently working on island solutions addres...

Several Peer-to-Peer (P2P) protocols and applications have been developed to allow file distribution/sharing, video and music streaming, and data and information dissemination. These P2P systems are regularly used by a large number of users, both in desktop and mobile environments, and they generate a remarkable portion of the overall Internet traf...