Open Access

The Atmosphaeres project aims to reduce sufferers’ stress and pain levels by using 360° video environments that are presented in a highly immersive Head-Mounted Display (HMD). Here we report first insights of our prototype combination of the 360° video environments and the Oculus Rift, the HMD used for our project. We find that our ‘Atmosphaeres’ are capable of truly transporting the user to another, virtually created location, however, there were a number of restrictions with the first system, including image quality and nausea which we hope to eliminate with the system we present in this paper. There are also a number of research questions that need to be considered for the use of the Atmosphaeres in stress and pain management or for general relaxation purposes. These questions include whether 360° video environments are capable of reducing stress and experienced pain and whether changes to the Oculus Rift DK2 do in fact reduce the nausea that was often caused by the DK1. Sound is another important yet often under-considered factor in many Virtual Reality applications and questions we seek to answer revolve around how the quality and type of audio contribute to users’ feeling of presence and ultimately their stress and pain levels.

This paper presents an overview on and reports on early experiences of the European ACTS project AC089 called „Distributed Video Production (DVP)“ which started in late 1995. Central to DVP are distributed pilot applications for professional digital video production over ATM broadband networks (LAN and WAN). Distributed video production refers to situations where the cameras, recorders, switches, mixers and other equipment used in video production (or post-production) are located at several sites linked by high bandwidth network connections. The DVP project investigates requirements of broadcasters for several forms of distributed video production and runs a series of trials of distributed virtual studios, distributed rehearsals and remote video editing and retrieval. Together with North American partners a transatlantic broadband ATM link will be tested for distributed virtual reality simulations. This paper reports about two initial tests with a German public broadcaster and the German Telekom. DVP project partners are GMD and about 20 broadcasters, computer and video equipment manufacturers, and video production companies. More information can be obtained from http://viswiz.gmd.de/DVP

In this paper we present a new storytelling approach, called Hypermedia Novel (HYMN), that extends the classical narration concept of a story. We develop an underlying modular concept – the narration module – that facilitates a new manner of reception as well as creation of a story. The HYMN focuses on the recipient and his role of consuming a story and a heterogeneous group of creative authors by providing narration modules and their interfaces without defining the granularity of the modules. Using several kinds ofmultimedia elements and a hyperlink structure, we present a first demonstrator that implements this new concept. We also discuss improvements, e.g. MPEG-4/7, that support both reception by the audience, and the process of creating the story by a dispersed team of authors.