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About 1,996 papers for “Virtual actor”

User Centred Virtual Actor Technology

Daphne Economou Sony, Jays Close, Rg Sb England · 2008

This paper argues that the development of virtual actor technology must be guided by application and end user needs. Two objectives drive the development of the `Senet' project described in this paper: to develop a set of design guidelines for the use of virtual actors in Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) for learning, and to inform the development of the underlying virtual actor technology following a user centred approach. The methodological approach followed involves the development of prototype virtual learning environments in a series of distinct phases. These are based on an ancient Egyptian game (senet) and are aimed at children at Key Stage Level 2 of the National Curriculum for education in England. Two-dimensional multimedia technology has been used to develop robust prototypes, which were then observed in use by children. The result of this study derived a set of design guidelines, which were then used to guide the implementation of a 3D CVE using the Deva CVE technology.

Cited by 0

Actor–Observer Asymmetry in Virtual Reality

Shuo Zhou, Andrea Stevenson Won · Journal of Media Psychology Theories Methods and Applications · 2023

Abstract: Actors and observers attend to different aspects of behavior, leading them to interpret the same event in distinct ways. Virtual reality technology enables users to easily switch their visual perspective and modify an avatar to represent users’ own or another’s identity. We conducted a pilot study ( n = 69) and a pre-registered main study ( n = 101) manipulating visual perspective and avatar identity to investigate their impacts on actor–observer asymmetry. We designed a ball-tossing game in an immersive virtual environment as a test case. Actor–observer differences were captured from four dimensions: participants’ engagement with the virtual event, behavior explanations, behavior evaluations, and perceived agency. Results showed that visual perspective was an important factor influencing people’s virtual experience. Viewing events from the first-person visual perspective increased event engagement indicated by greater self-presence in the virtual world and self-avatar merging. Participants with the third-person visual perspective judged avatar behavior more intentional and used more subjective reasons to explain it. People embodied in an avatar that resembled the self had more positive evaluations of the avatar’s behavior than those embodied in a stranger avatar. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of actor–observer asymmetry in virtual reality.

Cited by 2Open access

Natural Language Communication With Virtual Actor

Aries Muslim, Karyati Cut Maisyarah, Kurniawan Robby · Gunadarma University Repository (Gunadarma University) · 2008

The development of realistic virtual actors in many
\napplications, from user interface to computer entertainment,
\ncreates expectations on the intelligence of these actors
\nincluding their ability to understand natural language. Based
\non our research in that area over the past years, we highlight
\nspecific technical aspects in the development of
\nlanguage-enabled actors. The embodied nature of virtual
\nagents lead to specific syntactic constructs that are not unlike
\nsublanguages: these can be used to specify the parsing
\ncomponent of a natural language interface. However, the
\nmost specific aspects of interacting with virtual actors
\nconsist in mapping the semantic content of users’ input to the
\nmechanisms that support agents’ behaviours. We suggest
\nthat a generalisation of speech acts can provide principles for
\nthis integration. Both aspects are illustrated by results
\nobtained during the development of research prototypes..

Cited by 0Open access

From One Virtual Actor to Virtual Crowds: Requirements and Constraints

Soraia Raupp Musse, Daniel Thalmann · 2000

A crowd is not only a group of many individuals. Crowd modelling involves problems that arise only when we focus on crowds. For instance, avoiding collision problems related to a big number of individuals in the same place require different strategies in comparison with the methods used to avoid collision between individuals. This paper is concerned with a discussion about the requirements to model behaviours of crowds of virtual actors. Keywords Multi-agent systems, synthetic agents and crowds model. 1. INTRODUCTION The mass behaviours and motion of crowds have been simulated in computers with different purposes. To be applied in entertainment areas in order to simulate a realistic motion of lots of virtual people that can be directed as easily as one only individual, e.g. films production and games. To supply simulation of crowd motion in order to evaluate constrained and complex environments, e.g. simulate the flow of people in a football stadium. To populate immersive virtual e...

Cited by 0

The Actor-Observer Effect in Virtual Reality Presentations

Pontus Larsson, Daniel Västfjäll, Mendel Kleiner · CyberPsychology & Behavior · 2001

The use of virtual reality (VR) presentations are becoming a more and more frequent means of communicating information and displaying data to large groups of viewers. VR presentations put heavy demands on reproduction of visual, aural, and tactile information. A common situation in VR presentations is that one actor acts in the virtual environment (VE), while a group of people observes the actors actions in the VE, often from the perspective of the actor. The current paper aims to study actors' (participants actively interacting with the VE) and observers' (participants passively observing the actors' interaction with the VE) evaluations of the VR presentation. In an experiment, 16 actors and 16 observers either acted in or observed a VE and performed ratings of the quality of the presentation. The results showed that actors experienced higher presence and realism, and enjoyed the VR experience more than observers did. Observers, on the other hand, experienced that external events distracted their attention more than actors did. Finally, actors experienced more symptoms of simulation sickness. However, no differences between actors and observers were found for ratings of audio quality.

Cited by 62

Youth as a Creative Actor of Virtual Reality

Трубарева, Д. Н., Нархова, Е. Н., Нархов, Д. Ю. et al. · Electronic scientific archive of UrFU (Ural Federal University) · 2023

Рассматривается специфика творчества в эпоху цифровизации, анализируются трансформации культурных предпочтений современной молодежи. Виртуальная реальность показана как новая среда молодежного творчества. Акцентируется внимание на изменение роли цифровых технологий — от среды до посредника актуализации творческого потенциала. На материалах анкетного опроса анализируются отношение молодежи к трансформациям в современной культуре, предпочтения творческой реализации молодежи в социальных сетях. Отмечается значение и социальная роль контента художественной информации в виртуальном пространстве. Делается вывод о детерминации виртуальной реальности новых форм творческой реализации молодежи. Ставится научная задача изучения цифровых инструментов управления ценностными ориентациями молодежи.

Cited by 0Open access

How Far Away are We From the Virtual Actor and the Virtual Scene?

C.-E. Liedtke, S. Weik, J. Wingbermühle et al. · 1997

This paper discusses 3-D generation techniques in view of virtual actors and scenes. Naturally looking virtual actors and scenes are obtained using current 3-D reconstruction techniques that describe real objects by 3-D models. Four techniques are introduced: For the generation of virtual sets, 3-D models of rigid objects are generated using a shape from silhouette approach. Arbitrary time-varying scenes are reconstructed using a stereo vision technique. When dealing with humans, this knowledge can be exploited for improving the 3-D models. Therefore, modelbased reconstruction techniques for persons are described using body animation for whole persons and facial animation when facial expressions are of interest. The naturalness of these 3-D models is illustrated, and their benefit for movie production is discussed. Keywords: 3-D reconstruction, body animation, facial animation, virtual actor, virtual set, 3-D modelling 1 Introduction Virtual scenes and virtual actors can be seen as s...

Cited by 0

Virtual Action Actor-Critic Framework for Exploration (Student Abstract)

Bumgeun Park, Taeyoung Kim, Quoc-Vinh Lai-Dang et al. · arXiv (Cornell University) · 2023

Efficient exploration for an agent is challenging in reinforcement learning (RL). In this paper, a novel actor-critic framework namely virtual action actor-critic (VAAC), is proposed to address the challenge of efficient exploration in RL. This work is inspired by humans' ability to imagine the potential outcomes of their actions without actually taking them. In order to emulate this ability, VAAC introduces a new actor called virtual actor (VA), alongside the conventional actor-critic framework. Unlike the conventional actor, the VA takes the virtual action to anticipate the next state without interacting with the environment. With the virtual policy following a Gaussian distribution, the VA is trained to maximize the anticipated novelty of the subsequent state resulting from a virtual action. If any next state resulting from available actions does not exhibit high anticipated novelty, training the VA leads to an increase in the virtual policy entropy. Hence, high virtual policy entropy represents that there is no room for exploration. The proposed VAAC aims to maximize a modified Q function, which combines cumulative rewards and the negative sum of virtual policy entropy. Experimental results show that the VAAC improves the exploration performance compared to existing algorithms.

Cited by 0Open access

Single Actor Controlling Multiple Avatars for Social Virtual Realities

J.J. Zhang, Anthony Steed · 2025

Social virtual reality applications aim to provide immersive, interactive experiences in populated environments with virtual characters. However, developing characters capable of natural verbal and non-verbal interactions remains a significant challenge, particularly when it comes to managing complex and unexpected interactions with users. To address these issues, we present a system that supports full-body avatars with six-point tracking and a streamlined switch control procedure, allowing one actor to assume control of multiple virtual humans and interact seamlessly with the users. The system supports both verbal and non-verbal interactions. In an experiment, we showed that our system enhances the sense of co-presence, creating the feeling that multiple distinct, human-controlled characters are present in the scene.

Cited by 0

Performing illusions: cinema, special effects and the virtual actor

Stephen Bottomore · Early Popular Visual Culture · 2012

"Performing illusions: cinema, special effects and the virtual actor." Early Popular Visual Culture, 10(1), pp. 95–96 Notes 1. Edwin A. Dawes and Michael Bailey, Circle without End: the Magic Circle 1905-2005 (London: Magic Circle; Centre for the Magic Arts, 2005), 25, 31-32.

Cited by 1

Embodied and Embedded Intelligence: Actor Agents on Virtual Stages

Heller, Bob · AUSpace (Athabasca University) · 2011

The paper was delivered to an audience of approximately 20. Comments were directed to the symposium group with nothing specific to our paper. The symposium group went out for lunch following the presentation and plans were made to submit our papers as part of a special issue to one of three journals.

Cited by 1

Virtual Action Actor-Critic Framework for Exploration (Student Abstract)

Association for Artificial Intelligence 2024, Har, Dongsoo, Kim, Taeyoung et al. · Underline Science Inc. · 2024

Efficient exploration for an agent is challenging in reinforcement learning (RL). In this paper, a novel actor-critic framework namely virtual action actor-critic (VAAC), is proposed to address the challenge of efficient exploration in RL. This work is inspired by humans' ability to imagine the potential outcomes of their actions without actually taking them. In order to emulate this ability, VAAC introduces a new actor called virtual actor (VA), alongside the conventional actor-critic framework. Unlike the conventional actor, the VA takes the virtual action to anticipate the next state without interacting with the environment. With the virtual policy following a Gaussian distribution, the VA is trained to maximize the anticipated novelty of the subsequent state resulting from a virtual action. If any next state resulting from available actions does not exhibit high anticipated novelty, training the VA leads to an increase in the virtual policy entropy. Hence, high virtual policy entropy represents that there is no room for exploration. The proposed VAAC aims to maximize a modified Q function, which combines cumulative rewards and the negative sum of virtual policy entropy. Experimental results show that the VAAC improves the exploration performance compared to existing algorithms.

Cited by 0Open access

Virtual Action Actor-Critic Framework for Exploration (Student Abstract)

Bumgeun Park, Taeyoung Kim, Quoc-Vinh Lai-Dang et al. · Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence · 2024

Efficient exploration for an agent is challenging in reinforcement learning (RL). In this paper, a novel actor-critic framework namely virtual action actor-critic (VAAC), is proposed to address the challenge of efficient exploration in RL. This work is inspired by humans' ability to imagine the potential outcomes of their actions without actually taking them. In order to emulate this ability, VAAC introduces a new actor called virtual actor (VA), alongside the conventional actor-critic framework. Unlike the conventional actor, the VA takes the virtual action to anticipate the next state without interacting with the environment. With the virtual policy following a Gaussian distribution, the VA is trained to maximize the anticipated novelty of the subsequent state resulting from a virtual action. If any next state resulting from available actions does not exhibit high anticipated novelty, training the VA leads to an increase in the virtual policy entropy. Hence, high virtual policy entropy represents that there is no room for exploration. The proposed VAAC aims to maximize a modified Q function, which combines cumulative rewards and the negative sum of virtual policy entropy. Experimental results show that the VAAC improves the exploration performance compared to existing algorithms.

Cited by 2Open access

A workout for virtual bodybuilders (design issues for embodiment in multi-actor virtual environments)

Steve Benford, Jeffrey S. Bowers, Lennart E. Fahlén et al. · NASA Technical Reports Server (NASA) · 1994

This paper explores the issue of user embodiment within collaborative virtual environments. By user embodiment we mean the provision of users with appropriate body images so as to represent them to others and also to themselves. By collaborative virtual environments we mean multi-user virtual reality systems which support cooperative work (although we argue that the results of our exploration may also be applied to other kinds of collaborative systems). The main part of the paper identifies a list of embodiment design issues including: presence, location, identity, activity, availability, history of activity, viewpoint, action point, gesture, facial expression, voluntary versus involuntary expression, degree of presence, reflecting capabilities, manipulating the user's view of others, representation across multiple media, autonomous and distributed body parts, truthfulness and efficiency. Following this, we show how these issues are reflected in our own DIVE and MASSIVE prototype collaborative virtual environments.

Cited by 0

A workout for virtual bodybuilders (design issues for embodiment in multi-actor virtual environments)

Greenhalgh, Chris, Snowdon, Dave, Bowers, John et al. · NASA Technical Reports Server (NASA)

This paper explores the issue of user embodiment within collaborative virtual environments. By user embodiment we mean the provision of users with appropriate body images so as to represent them to others and also to themselves. By collaborative virtual environments we mean multi-user virtual reality systems which support cooperative work (although we argue that the results of our exploration may also be applied to other kinds of collaborative systems). The main part of the paper identifies a list of embodiment design issues including: presence, location, identity, activity, availability, history of activity, viewpoint, action point, gesture, facial expression, voluntary versus involuntary expression, degree of presence, reflecting capabilities, manipulating the user's view of others, representation across multiple media, autonomous and distributed body parts, truthfulness and efficiency. Following this, we show how these issues are reflected in our own DIVE and MASSIVE prototype collaborative virtual environments.

Cited by 0Open access

Submission Template AI-Driven Cross-Media Virtual Actor IP Ecosystem

Hongyuan Xie, Hongshu Wang, Xueyu Zhao · 2025

This study explores the IP evolution of AI-driven virtual actors across cross-media environments. By integrating multimodal generative models such as Stable Diffusion, Sora, and AudioCraft, it proposes a systematic AI Persona IP framework covering character creation, narrative expansion, and brand consolidation. Redundant descriptions of the framework are condensed, emphasizing its unique contribution to IP lifecycle extension. A comparative perspective is introduced by aligning the model with classical frameworks such as Keller's Brand Equity Model and Aaker's Brand Building Process, demonstrating its alignment with established IP management theory. Empirical results based on 1,200 multimodal samples and 300,000 interaction records show that AI virtual actors outperform human actors in lifecycle duration, communication reach, and ROI, with 33% higher fan retention and 60% more brand collaborations. The findings indicate that AI virtual humans are becoming key intelligent assets in the digital content economy, reshaping creative production and value-chain structures. This work provides theoretical insight and a practical framework for sustainable development within the intelligent entertainment ecosystem.

Cited by 0Open access

Virtual reality and journalistic culture: an actor-network theory approach

Radwa Mabrook · City Research Online (City University London) · 2019

This study examines the relationship between VR and journalistic culture, with a special focus on role perceptions and ethical ideologies. It identifies the dramatic changes in journalistic practice and the emerging cultures of work in VR content creation. The study focuses on how these changes interact with normative ideals, such as facticity, accuracy, objectivity, detachment and transparency, drawing on Actor Network Theory (ANT) and sociological explorations of journalistic culture. ANT enabled the researcher to trace every actor involved in VR content creation, allowing the technology to be an object of study. The sociological explorations of journalistic culture then allowed the researcher to situate the VR culture in a broader context. The researcher used methodological triangulation of semi structured interviews with fact-based content creators and social semiotic analysis of VR content to provide a holistic understanding of VR journalism. The researcher conducted semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of thirty fact-based content creators between November 2017 and April 2018. She then conducted a social semiotic analysis of a purposive sample of sixteen VR pieces produced by Al Jazeera, the BBC, The Guardian, The New York Times and PBS, the US public broadcaster. The findings indicated that the significant change of journalistic practice in VR does not reflect a corresponding change in content creators’ normative understandings of journalism. Content creators insist that their normative understandings remain unchanged. They uphold ideals of facticity, accuracy, objectivity and detachment, and emphasise transparency as a means of demonstrating journalistic rigor. Content creators actively seek creative ways to address normative challenges and maintain their jurisdiction in VR. They adopt an exceptionist ethical ideology, in which they allow journalistic ideals to guide their work and remain pragmatically open for exceptions to prevent potential negative consequences. Content creators are, thus, outcome-oriented journalists, who make situation-based ethical judgments guided by their normative understandings. The findings also indicated that the emerging cultures of work in VR are not new, they have long existed in narrative, entrepreneurial and interactive data-driven journalism. VR is, indeed, a stage within the long continuum of shifting journalistic practices, representing the constant attempt of journalists to remain truthful to journalistic norms while adapting to change.

Cited by 0Open access