Workshop 2: Storytelling in Virtual Reality Environments

Virtual worlds have become more and more technically perfect. Software and hardware have been developed so that one can see virtual scenarios with high visual complexity. Acoustical and haptical senses are also involved in modern virtual installations. The new challenge in virtual environments is the narrative part. The experience is the very new way of storytelling. As we see the high speed of development in the game industry, the need for new forms of storytelling is apparent. Virtual Reality is also more and more present as a marketing and commercial instrument. The fascination of 3D-immersive installations is still unbroken. The goal is to improve the content. Virtual Storytelling will be one of the important progresses in virtual reality. Professional dramatuges and directors have to be able to work on stories in VR. We have to develop interfaces and tools for them that enable them to work on virtual sceneries. These tools should include the narrative as well as the technical and creative issues, for example, cameratracking and lightmoods. Virtual Storytelling as a narrative potential is the topic of this workshop. The workshop aims at bringing together researchers from the area of AR/VR technology, human computer interaction, AI, as well as psychologists, SF authors, and other people with a vision of how storytelling in immersive virtual reality environments should look. The goal of this workshop is to showcase, develop, and discuss concepts for better virtual storytelling methods, tools and collaborative work between computer scientists and creatives. Additional to envolve ideas towards the realization of interfaces enabling narrative and creative virtual sceneries. Topics addressed in this workshop include but are not restricted to: Storytelling Tools: • storytelling methods in VR • Tools and interfaces for Storytelling Intuitive Interaction: • natural human interaction • 3D interaction techniques • deep immersion and how to achieve it Innovative AR/VR Interfaces: • adaptive and intelligent interfaces • collaborative AR/VR • teleimmersion • mobile and wearable computing interfaces • AR/VR applications of the future Synthetic characters: • human modeling and simulation • conversational agents • interface issues • social implication Proceedings of the IEEE Virtual Reality 2002 (VR’02) 1087-8270/02 $17.00 © 2002 IEEE