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A puck glides through virtual worlds
July 22, 2002Trees form on the screen as if by magic, and a rainbow emerges over the high treetops as birds glide silently through the skies. Yet the composition of this three-dimensional fantasy world has nothing to do with magic. It has been created and animated by children on an "Assemble Table". As the school kid slides the disc-shaped puck gently over the monitor, a witch suddenly appears in the scene. Another kid controls the movements of the cat.
Over the past few months, kids have been able to shape their own virtual worlds in the media laboratory of the Vienna Children's Museum. Each element of the picture, which was previously drawn and scanned in, is controlled by one of twenty markers used to position each object - whether tree, dog or person. This allows each child to be involved in what happens in the scene created in virtual 3D space. When the final animation is completed, the film is then projected onto a screen and later made available on the Internet. "The system we developed together with the Viennese company uma information technology, is a hit at the children's museum," says Dr. Nils Rehfeld, project manager at the Fraunhofer Institute for Information and Data Processing IITB. "Children learn how to work together and develop an idea. In addition, this is a playful way to introduce them to the world of virtual reality."
In crash-test scenarios, the markers are moved by speed and external brute force; at the Vienna Children' Museum, the objects are positioned with the gentle movement of a child's hand. A video camera mounted above the table records the discs ten times per second and a computer in real time fixes their positions in a three-dimensional image. The planning of stage sets represents a further field of application: In the virtual world, walls and props can be pushed back and forth until the director, producer and set designers are satisfied with their final arrangement on stage.
Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft
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