PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

From 1st to 6th June 2008, the Dagstuhl Seminar 08231 ``Virtual Realities'' was held in the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI), Schloss Dagstuhl. Virtual Reality (VR) is a multidisciplinary area of research aimed at interactive human-computer mediated simulations of artificial environments. Typical applications include simulation, training, scientific visualization, and entertainment. An important aspect of VR-based systems is the stimulation of the human senses – typically sight, sound, and touch – such that a user feels a sense of presence (or immersion) in the virtual environment. Different applications require different levels of presence, with corresponding levels of realism, sensory immersion, and spatiotemporal interactive fidelity. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed. Abstracts of the presentations given during the seminar as well as abstracts of seminar results and ideas are put together in this paper. Links to extended abstracts or full papers are provided, if available. Article abstract: The complexity of interactive 3D graphics systems continuously grows. Animated virtual worlds require several processes to generate a believable and consistent user impression. Advanced audio, physics, or AI-behaviors - to name a few - are nowadays omnipresent in research as well as in entertainment applications. This talk introduces a novel design and development paradigm for such interactive and complex systems. ﰐSemantic Reﰝectionﰑ extends the well known reﰝection principle of current programming languages using an explicit semantic layer. It facilitates a uniform and integrative design of architectures, layouts, and inter- faces even for complex systems. In addition, the paradigm provides an implicit AI representation useful - if not necessary - in areas like, e.g., multimodal inter- action, physical simulation, or intelligent virtual agents.