Abstract Modern urban space, technological infrastructure, and sociability combine into a hybrid space that is the arena for urban pervasive games. Over the past two decades the changes in this game arena have been stealthy although substantial. Technological developments have helped to achieve true mobility of gaming devices, increased precision in localization, improved connectivity, and reduced orchestration required per player. Current pervasive location-based games can be played anytime anywhere. Subsequently, doors have been opened for a growing number of commercial games. These changes demand a new conceptualization of the urban game arena. This thesis focuses on playful appropriations of hybrid space. Hybrid space is urban space that entails ubiquitous technologies. Therefore, playful appropriations of hybrid space are always, to some extent, digital as well as urban. Prior research has identified two metaphors for urban pervasive games —true mobility and true sociability. This thesis proposes an additional metaphor, called synchronicity, for binding together different realities in pervasive games. They can be anything from mirror world like realistic virtual environments, such as 3D virtual representations of a city, to abstract realities, such as the backstory of the game, or the space identity of a certain location. While location awareness is an important binding factor between the virtual and physical worlds in pervasive gameplay, synchronizable elements can be anything from encouraged collocated gameplay to semantic similarities between the combined realities. This thesis is based on five game constructs that have been specifically designed and implemented as pervasive research games. Research data has been collected and analyzed with a mixed methods approach from field trials conducted in the wild. Constructive research is complemented with a literature review that maps the characteristics of current location-based mobile games and the game space. The main contribution of this thesis is the identification of the digital, abstract, and physical layers of reality in digital urban pervasive games. The second contribution is the identification and categorization of the synchronizable elements that bind these realities together. This thesis offers initial insights into translating this knowledge into the design of future pervasive games. / Tiivistelmä Urbaanitila on jatkuvassa muutoksessa, sillä se muotoutuu ja järjestyy uudelleen siellä kulkevien kaupunkilaisten kautta. Ubiikin teknologian, ihmisten kanssakäymisen ja modernin tilakäsityksen yhteisvaikutuksesta syntyy niin sanottu hybriditila, joka muodostaa peliareenan monille pervasiivisille peleille. Viime vuosikymmeninä tällä peliareenalla on tapahtunut vaivihkaisia mutta perustavaa laatua olevia muutoksia. Pelilaitteista on tullut aidosti mobiileja, ja ne kulkevat kaikkialla pelaajien mukana. Pelijärjestely vaatii vähemmän vaivaa pelaajaa kohden, paikannuksen tarkkuus on parantunut ja muutosten kautta myös kaupallisia pelejä on enemmän saatavilla. Nykyisiä pervasiivisia sijaintipohjaisia pelejä voi pelata milloin vain ja missä vain. Edellä mainittu kehitys edellyttää pervasiivisten pelien ja pelitilan uudelleen konseptualisointia. Väitöstyön aihe ei ole pelillisyys sellaisenaan, vaan “pelillisyys ja sen hyödyntäminen hybriditilassa”. Hybriditila on aina urbaani ja sisältää ubiikkia teknologiaa, minkä vuoksi pelit tässä tilassa ovat lähes poikkeuksetta myös digitaalisia. Aiempi tutkimus esittää, että saavutetut kehitysaskeleet voi niputtaa kahden metaforan alle. Nämä metaforat ovat: aito mobiilius sekä aito sosiaalisuus. Tämä väitöskirja esittää kolmannen, vielä määrittelemättömän tai saavuttamattoman metaforan näiden jatkoksi: synkronisuus. Synkronisoitavat piirteet tai elementit sitovat todellisuuksia yhteen pervasiivisessa pelitilassa. Tilassa olevat todellisuudet voivat olla realistisia pelimaailman kaltaisia virtuaalitiloja tai abstrakteja todellisuuksia, kuten pelitarinan muodostama todellisuus tai jonkin tietyn paikan tilaidentiteetti. Vaikka sijaintipohjaisuus on tärkeä todellisuuksia yhdistävä piirre, synkronisoitavat elementit voivat olla muutakin kuin sijaintikoordinaatteja. Pervasiiviset pelit nivoutuvat pelaajiensa päivittäiseen elämään, mikä tekee pelin kontekstista erottamattoman osan peliä. Tämä ominaisuus oikeuttaa ”in the wild” -menetelmien käytön tutkimuksessa, mikä tarkoittaa, että pelaamista ja pelejä tarkkaillaan luonnossa todellisessa ympäristössään. Tässä väitöstyössä käytetään konstruktioina varta vasten tätä tutkimusta ajatellen suunniteltuja ja toteutettuja pervasiivisia tutkimuspelejeä. Konstruktiivista tutkimusta tukee lisäksi teoreettinen tutkimusosio, joka koostuu kirjallisuuskatsaukseen pohjautuvasta nykyisten sijaintipohjaisten pelien ja pelitilan kategorisoinnista. Pervasiiviset pelit nivoutuvat pelaajiensa päivittäiseen elämään, mikä tekee pelin kontekstista erottamattoman osan peliä. Tämä ominaisuus oikeuttaa ”in the wild” -menetelmien käytön tutkimuksessa, mikä tarkoittaa, että pelaamista ja pelejä tarkkaillaan luonnossa todellisessa ympäristössään. Tässä väitöstyössä käytetään konstruktioina varta vasten tätä tutkimusta ajatellen suunniteltuja ja toteutettuja pervasiivisia tutkimuspelejeä. Konstruktiivista tutkimusta tukee lisäksi teoreettinen tutkimusosio, joka koostuu kirjallisuuskatsaukseen pohjautuvasta nykyisten sijaintipohjaisten pelien ja pelitilan kategorisoinnista.

<p>Upon introducing semi- and fully automated vehicles on the road, drivers will be reluctant to focus on the traffic interaction and rely on the vehicles' decision-making. However, encountering pedestrians still poses a significant difficulty for modern automated driving technologies. Considering the high-level complexity in human behavior modeling to solve a real-world problem, deep-learning algorithms trained from naturalistic data have become promising solutions. Nevertheless, although developing such algorithms is achievable based on scene data collection and driver knowledge extraction, evaluation remains challenging due to the potential crash risks and limitations in acquiring ground-truth intention changes. </p> <p><br></p> <p>This study proposes a VR-based testing bed to evaluate real-time pedestrian intention algorithms as VR simulators are recognized for their affordability and adaptability in producing a variety of traffic situations, and it is more reliable to conduct human-factor research in autonomous cars. The pedestrian wears the head-mounted headset or uses the keyboard input and makes decisions in accordance with the circumstances. The simulator has added a credible and robust experience, essential for exhibiting the real-time behavior of the pedestrian. While crossing the road, there exists uncertainty associated with pedestrian intention. Our simulator will anticipate the crossing intention with consideration of the ambiguity of the pedestrian behavior. The case study has been performed over multiple subjects in several crossing conditions based on day-to-day life activities. It can be inferred from the study outcomes that the pedestrian intention can be precisely inferred using this VR-based simulator. However, depending on the speed of the car and the distance between the vehicle and the pedestrian, the accuracy of the prediction can differ considerably in some cases.</p>

The game development processes behind entertainment games are not well understood. While there are studies that report on user interface evaluation in game production, there are very few studies that report on user interface design. The purpose of study is to explore and learn more about the game industry perspective and their processes behind user interface design. A systematic literature review was performed on the Game developers Conference database, GDC Vault. The review uncovered 105 presentations that relate to UI Design. A thematic analysis was performed to explore the eight most relevant presentations to the research question. The analysis resulted in two themes. The first theme describes UI designers’ experience of interdisciplinary collaboration. The second theme describe two seemingly conflicting goals in the UI design process: aesthetics and usability. The study contributes to the field of game development research with some knowledge about how the game industry create UI design.

Im interested in the topic of praying machine, because I want to analyze aspects of photography and its functions. It's known, that the reality is manipulated by photography. Bud we can also say, that the relationship between reality and photography is neutral in fact, that the manipulation is made by our interpretation of photography. The change of the reality can be realized just in the dialog between photography and reality. Can it be, that the mechanization change into the will? Does it prays praying mill or the buddhistic monk, who rotates the mill? When he believes into it, is it enough? Or is it enough if believes who watch the monk with his mill? ... The computers from he place A are "praying" the prayers from the place B. With Tomáš Javůrek we collaborated with Vladimír Veselý and Radek Lát to create the Game for re-articulation our reality on the base of the revision of our faith.