New ways of worldmaking: the Alterne platform for VR art

We introduce a novel approach to the creation of Virtual Reality Art installations, which supports the design of alternative worlds, in which laws of Physics can be redefined to induce new user experiences. To implement this concept of "Alternative Reality", we have used Artificial Intelligence techniques to support the definition of the virtual environment behaviour, an approach inspired by Qualitative Reasoning systems. Besides the redefinition of physical laws, we have developed mechanisms for eliciting causal relations between events, as causality plays an important part in users' perception of virtual worlds. Our pilot installation is a CAVETM -like system incorporating a state-of-theart computer game engine as visualisation software, which hasbeen ported to this immersive display. The event-based system underlying the game engine is used to bypass the native Physics engine and replace it with our Alternative Reality software. A first prototype has been fully imple...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: MM
• Authors: Marc Cavazza, Jean-Luc Lugrin, Simon Hartley, Paolo Libardi, Matthew J. Barnes, Mikael Le Bras, Marc Le Renard, Louis Bec, Alok Nandi
• Keywords: Alternative Reality, MM 2004, Virtual Reality, Virtual Reality Art