Ralf Dörner

RheinMain University of Applied Sciences · Department of Design, Computer Science, Media

Hochschulen für Angewandte Wissenschaften (HAW) übernehmen in Deutschland etwa die Hälfte der Informatikausbildung im Bereich Bachelor und Master. Neu ist, dass auch Doktortitel in Informatik an einigen HAW erworben werden können. Dies eröffnet für Informatik neue Perspektiven und wirft Fragestellungen auf. Neben den Charakteristika einer Promotion...

In diesem Beitrag wird ein Katalog aus 31 Einsatzmustern vorgestellt, wie XR-Technologien für Museen eingesetzt werden können. Jedes Einsatzmuster beschreibt das Einsatzpotential, die dabei erreichbaren potentiellen Mehrwerte sowie wie der Einsatz mit XR-Technologien realisiert werden kann. Die Einsatzmuster sind in die Kategorien Informationsvermi...

Assessing a player’s performance is an essential part of gamified applications or serious games. For keyboard practice in the musical domain, an established approach is comparing played keys and a fixed MIDI score. However, concerning the evaluation of live performances (the actual keyboard playing and not to confuse with the stage public performan...

Predicting results in electronic sports (e-sports) matches is not an easy task. Different methods can be used for this purpose. A well-known video game in the field of Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) is the game League of Legends (LoL), which has a relevant professional scene. An important part of professional gaming is analyzing past matche...

While head-mounted displays (HMDs) for Virtual Reality (VR) have become widely available in the consumer market, they pose a considerable obstacle for a realistic face-to-face conversation in VR since HMDs hide a significant portion of the participants faces. Even with image streams from cameras directly attached to an HMD, stitching together a con...

The use of Augmented Reality (AR) has the potential to make everyday experiences exciting and educational. For example, AR can augment exhibits in museums with animated and interactive content. The creation of this content, however, is still facing challenges. To meet these, we employ reusable, pattern-based building blocks called AR nuggets. An AR...

In the context of e-learning, it is challenging to incorporate emerging technologies, such as alternate reality games or Virtual Reality (VR), within current learning trends. Microlearning is such a current trend. It divides large and complex chunks of content into small and elementary learning nuggets. These single self-contained nuggets are then...

Overall, the paper explores perspectives for future developments, identifies challenges, and potential advantages for using smart augmented reality for the future in social computing and collaborative assistance. The paper identifies seven major challenges when using computer-mediated communication today. It provides perspectives and visions on how...

We present our concept and prototypical implementation of an avatar guide that helps museum visitors to navigate to chosen points of interest. The prototype shows an animated butterfly with interactive behavior that is controlled by a state machine. The avatar’s path can be pre-defined at an authoring stage, by walking the space with the head-mount...

Creating Augmented Reality (AR) applications can be an arduous process. With most current authoring tools, authors must complete multiple authoring steps in a time-consuming process before they can try their AR application and get a first impression of it. Especially for laypersons, complex workflows set a high barrier to getting started with creat...

Virtual Reality (VR) systems and VR content are complex, and their creation can mainly be conducted by experts in VR and related areas. That makes the use of VR challenging for experts from other domains, such as educators. In this paper, we build up on existing work and investigate the VR nugget concept—small self-contained VR systems that are bui...

This chapter is a collection of selected VR/AR case studies from academia and industry.

In Chap. 1, VR and AR have already been introduced as innovative forms of human–computer interaction. This chapter deals in detail with the design and realization of interaction and the resulting user interface of a VR/AR system. A user interacts with a virtual world to select (selection) and change (manipulation) virtual objects and to control the...

What is Virtual Reality (VR)? What is Augmented Reality (AR)? What is the purpose of VR/AR? What are the basic concepts? What are the hard- and software components of VR/AR systems? How has VR/AR developed historically? The first chapter examines these questions and provides an introduction to this textbook. This chapter is fundamental for the whol...

In Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality, mathematical methods offer fundamental principles to model three-dimensional space. This makes it possible to provide exact information and perform calculations, e.g., to determine distances or to describe the effects of transformations such as rotations or translations exactly. This chapter compiles the mo...

This chapter deals with the authoring of VR and AR applications. The focus here is on the use of authoring tools in the form of software development kits (SDKs) or game engines. First, the actual authoring process will be briefly discussed before selected authoring tools for VR and AR are reviewed. Subsequently, the authoring process and the use of...

Virtual Reality (VR) has the special ability to provide the user with the illusion of presence in a virtual world. This is one aspect of the valuable potential that VR possesses concerning the design and realization of human–machine interfaces. Whether and how successfully this potential is exploited is not only a technical problem. It is also base...

This comprehensive textbook offers a scientifically sound and at the same time practical introduction to Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR). Readers will gain the theoretical foundation needed to design, implement or enhance VR/AR systems, evaluate and improve user interfaces and applications using VR/AR methods, assess and enrich user experienc...

This paper presents methods and techniques for teaching Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) that were conceived and refined during more than 20 years of our teaching experience on these subjects in higher education. We cover a broad spectrum from acquainting learners with VR and AR as only one aspect of a more general course to an in-de...

Electronic Sports (eSports) is a fast-growing domain within the entertainment sector and becomes economically relevant in terms of a paying audience, merchandise, and major tournaments with highly endowed prize money. First-person shooter (FPS) games represent a dominant discipline. Professional training methodologies such as post-match analyses an...

Im Rahmen des Projekts “Digitales Lehren und Lernen in Hessen” (DigLL) wurde vom Arbeitskreis AR/VR eine umfangreiche Recherche und Kategorisierung von AR und VR Software für Anwendungen in der Lehre ausgeführt, deren Ergebnis ein frei verfügbarer Online-Katalog ist. Zunächst wurden 308 Projekte gesichtet, hierbei wurden Projekte aus Hessen und dem...

Every Virtual Reality (VR) experience has to end at some point. While there already exist concepts to design transitions for users to enter a virtual world, their return from the physical world should be considered, as well, as it is a part of the overall VR experience. We call the latter outro-transitions. In contrast to offboarding of VR experien...

In recent years, Augmented Reality (AR) technology has been adopted in various fields. The development of handheld devices (HHD) such as smartphones and tablets gives people more chances to use AR technology in their daily lives. However, AR applications using head-mounted devices (HMD) such as Microsoft HoloLens or Magic Leap provide stronger pres...

Providing the opportunity for hands-on experience is crucial when teaching courses about Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). However, the workload on the educator's side for providing these opportunities might be prohibitive. In addition, other organizational challenges can arise, for example, demonstrations of VR/AR application in a c...

Multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) games such as League of Legends (LoL) belong to the most played competitive game genres. This genre also represents a significant part of the electronic sports (e-sports) domain. MOBA e-sports events enjoy growing popularity in recent years, for example, concerning the number of spectating fans and cash prizes...

An increasing number of companies, businesses and educational institutions are becoming familiar with the term gamification, which is about integrating game elements into a non-playful context. Gamification is becoming more important in various fields, such as e-learning, where a person needs to be motivated to be productive. The use of Virtual Rea...

Face-to-face conversation in Virtual Reality (VR) is a challenge when participants wear head-mounted displays (HMD). A significant portion of a participant's face is hidden and facial expressions are difficult to perceive. Past research has shown that high-fidelity face reconstruction with personal avatars in VR is possible under laboratory conditi...

Slideshow presentations have become ubiquitous in our everyday life, and are used for communicating information of different kinds. In this paper, we consider two different concepts that include both slides and VR technology in one presentation, mixed presentations, and virtual presentations, and examine the role of the presenter in these concepts....

Physicians must participate in continuing medical education (CME) as part of the medical quality assurance. One possibility is to take online courses in their private living environment. These courses are mostly text-or video-based. Novel technologies such as mobile Augmented (AR) or mobile Virtual Reality (VR) are not yet established although thei...

Smartphones and tablets are common technologies within today’s private living environments. They are well-suited to serve as a platform for mobile Augmented Reality (AR). Tangible AR is a subclass of AR which includes tangible objects and can make interactions intuitive. With this, new options for human-computer interaction become available at home...

Tangible Augmented Reality (TAR) is a subclass of Augmented Reality (AR) that includes tangible objects within AR interfaces. For example, utilizing object tracking and methodologies from AR, a real object such as a steering wheel can be used to steer a virtual car and thus becomes part of the user interface of an AR game. In this paper, we introdu...

Bite-sized learning is a current educational trend in which educators di- vide content into relatively small, easily comprehensible chunks, called nuggets. In this paper, we introduce an authoring toolkit that relies on VR implementation of nuggets and show that a nugget-based approach is also facilitating the authoring of VR learning content. In p...

Asymmetric Virtual Reality (VR) applications are a substantial subclass of multi-user VR that offers not all participants the same interaction possibilities with the virtual scene. While one user might be immersed using a VR head-mounted display (HMD), another user might experience the VR through a common desktop PC. In an educational scenario, for...

Microlearning is a current trend in learning and education methodologies that relies on dividing learning content in relatively small and independent learning units. These units are also referred to as nuggets. From a teaching perspective, nuggets are used as a medium in specific learning situations and can be considered a realization of a pattern...

A current educational trend is to divide learning content in relatively small and independent learning units, referred to as learning nuggets. These “bite-sized” nuggets often rely on patterns in order to reuse these patterns within highly diverse curricular structures like lessons, presentations or demos. In this paper, we explore how virtual real...

The “third mission” of higher education institution demands them to closely engage with the general society and stakeholders in the economy. An established method to do so is giving demos of different laboratories at events like open house days. 360\(^\circ \) Virtual Reality (VR) can be a valuable medium in such settings, especially when laborator...

Highlighting important elements is a fundamental task to guide the user’s attention in Virtual Reality (VR) applications. Besides the authoring process of a VR application, the creation of these cues for highlighting in 360° video VR already is a non-trivial task itself. It is even more challenging for laymen in the field of VR. This paper has thre...

Learning to program can be a tedious task for students. The intrinsic motivation towards games can help to facilitate the first steps in such learning tasks. In this paper we introduce FunPlogs – a serious puzzle mini-game for learning fundamental programming principles. We use visual scripting aspects within this game. These must be used by the st...

In Kap. 1 haben wurde schon VR und AR als innovative Formen der Mensch-Computer-Interaktion vorgestellt. Dieses Kapitel behandelt die Gestaltung und Realisierung von Interaktionen und der daraus resultierenden Benutzungsschnittstelle (engl. User Interface) eines VR/AR-Systems detailliert. Ein Nutzer interagiert mit einer Virtuellen Welt, um virtuel...

In der Virtuellen Realität greift man häufig auf Methoden der Mathematik zurück, um den dreidimensionalen Raum zu modellieren. Dies erlaubt es exakte Angaben zu machen und Berechnungen durchzuführen, z. B. Abstände zu ermitteln oder die Effekte von Transformationen wie Rotationen oder Verschiebungen exakt zu beschreiben. Dieses Kapitel stellt die w...

Ein wesentliches Potential von VR als Mensch-Maschine-Schnittstelle liegt in der Möglichkeit, dem Nutzer die Illusion der Anwesenheit in der dargestellten Virtuellen Welt zu suggerieren. Ob und wie gut dies gelingt, ist nicht nur ein technisches Problem, sondern beruht auch auf Prozessen der menschlichen Wahrnehmung zur Interpretation der dargebote...

Was ist Virtuelle Realität (VR)? Was versteht man unter Augmentierter Realität (AR)? Wozu dienen VR/AR? Welche Grundkonzepte gibt es? Wie sind VR/AR – Systeme aufgebaut? Wie hat sich VR/AR geschichtlich entwickelt? Diesen Fragen geht das erste Kapitel nach und vermittelt so eine Einführung in das vorliegende Lehrbuch. Das Kapitel ist grundlegend fü...

Dieses Kapitel enthält eine Sammlung von ausgewählten erfolgreichen Fallbeispielen für VR/AR aus Forschung und Praxis.

Dieses Kapitel befasst sich mit der Erstellung von VR- und AR-Anwendungen. Im Zentrum der Betrachtung steht hierbei die Nutzung von Autorenwerkzeugen in Form von Softwarepaketen oder (Game) Engines. Zunächst soll kurz auf den eigentlichen Autorenprozess eingegangen werden, bevor ausgewählte Autorenwerkzeuge für VR und AR betrachtet werden. Anschlie...

Virtual Reality (VR) technology has the potential to support knowledge communication in several sectors. Still, when educators make use of immersive VR technology in favor of presenting their knowledge, their audience within the same room may not be able to see them anymore due to wearing head-mounted displays (HMDs). In this paper, we propose the...

Representing users within an immersive virtual environment is an essential functionality of a multi-person virtual reality system. Especially when communicative or collaborative tasks must be performed, there exist challenges about realistic embodying and integrating such avatar representations. A shared comprehension of local space and non-verbal...

Virtual (VR) and augmented reality (AR) can bring an added value during the demonstration of knowledge, as for example within an interactive research demo. Callouts are strings of text which are connected by a line to a specific feature of an object. These visual annotations can be used during such demos and can be placed in different kinds of medi...

Knowledge Demonstration (KD) is closely related to the currently rising responsibility of higher education institution to engage with societal needs and economic demands. In this emerging domain, concepts are developed that support researchers to disseminate their research findings among different target audiences. A common method within KD is givi...

Die aktualisierte und erweiterte Zweitauflage dieses umfassenden Lehrbuchs bietet Studierenden, Lehrenden, Forschenden, Anwendern und Interessierten einen wissenschaftlich fundierten und dabei auch gleichzeitig praxisnahen Einstieg in die Grundlagen und Methoden der Virtuellen und Augmentierten Realität (VR/AR). Die Leser erhalten das theoretische...

Increasing digitalization also raises the need for teaching programming at universities not only in courses related to computer science but other subjects as well. These new target groups for education in computer programming require a change of the classic didactic that is usually applied in universities today. This article presents a literature s...

Experiences of a change in teaching programming are reported. We switched from weekly graded assignments to an automatic web application for the submission of solutions. We developed a web application, called »subato«, for this purpose. Programming challenges, with hidden unit tests, can be stored in the system. Subato will give continuous and dire...

The creation of high quality test items is a complex and time consuming task. Furthermore, the exchange of those items is not simple. We propose item twinning, where existing test items are used to create tailored variants. Along with exchangeability and similarity, these items become comparable. We have tested our method with a pool of test items...

Das Erlernen von Fertigkeiten in der Programmierung ist traditionell ein zentraler Bestandteil der Informatikausbildung z.B. an Hochschulen in Modulen wie „Programmiersprachen“ oder „Objekt-orientierte Softwareentwicklung“. Es wird aber auch immer mehr Teil einer breitenwirksamen Vermittlung von Kompetenzen spezifisch für eine digitale Gesellschaft...

Universities are more and more expected to disseminate research findings to the general public and specific stakeholders especially in the economy ("third mission"). Since this third mission also affects third party research funding within recent decades, scientists do need to be able to service both educational and marketing related purposes withi...

This paper focuses on multiuser virtual environments for collaborative tasks, that offer not all participants the same level of immersion and control over the virtual environment (VE). We propose a definition for a certain role within such an asymmetric setup-a 'VR-Guide'. In this paper, we present a dedicated tool to support VR-Guides and identify...

Der fünfzehnte Workshop "Virtuelle und Erweiterte Realität" der Fachgruppe VR/AR der Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. wurde an der Hochschule Düsseldorf vom 10.-11.10.2018 durchgeführt. Als etablierte Plattform für den Informations- und Ideenaustausch der deutschsprachigen VR/AR-Szene bot der Workshop den idealen Rahmen, aktuelle Ergebnisse und Vo...

Diese DIN SPEC wurde im Zuge des PAS-Verfahrens durch einen Workshop (temporäres Gremium) erarbeitet. Die Erarbeitung und Verabschiedung des Dokuments erfolgte durch die im Geschäftsplan genannten Verfasser. Diese DIN SPEC soll das Beschreibungsformat für "Serious Games" definieren. Unter dem Begriff "Serious Games" versteht man digitale Spiele, di...

Dieser Tagungsband dokumentiert die Beiträge zum 14. Workshop Virtuelle und Erweiterte Realität der Fachgruppe VR/AR der Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. Der traditionsreiche, jährlich stattfindende Workshop hat sich als Plattform für den Informations- und Ideenaustausch der deutschsprachigen VR/AR-Szene etabliert.

Being able to automatically recognize and interpret the affective state of the player can have various benefits in a Serious Game. The difficulty and pace of a learning game could be adapted, or the quality of the interaction between the player and the game could be improved – just to name two examples. This Chapter aims to give an introduction to...

This chapter contains an introduction to this book which aims at providing guidance to people who are interested in conducting or dealing with research in the area of entertainment computing and serious games. The chapter starts with defining key terminology. It then illustrates benefits and challenges in this area of research by discussing the dev...

The creation of a serious game comprises a multitude of tasks ranging from idea finding to playtesting. A crucial step is the implementation of the game design as a computer system. The quality—and to a lesser extent, cost and future adaptability—of a serious game depends heavily on the processes chosen to coordinate and to support all authors invo...

Creating entertainment games is always an interdisciplinary effort, and becomes even more pronounced when serious game creation involves experts from a specific subject area or supporting disciplines, such as pedagogy. As these experts can come from almost any discipline, it is beneficial for interdisciplinary work to appreciate differences in appr...

From a technical perspective, a game engine represents the basis of a game, providing the functionality for optimized and efficient graphic rendering, file system access, player input via devices such as keyboard and mouse, sound playback, and networking—as well saving and loading the game state. Game development studios realized that reusing softw...

This chapter introduces the basic subject of this book: serious games. Besides a definition of the term serious game, related fundamental concepts and terms such as gamification, gaming and playing or game mechanics are detailed. Reasons for using serious games and for delving into this subject are discussed. To better understand a serious game and...