Visualizing operations environments in three dimensions (3D) supports the warfighters' ability to make rapid, well-informed decisions by presenting complex systems in a naturalistic, integrated display format. Unfortunately, constructing these environments is a time-consuming task requiring specific expertise not typically available in the command center. The future use of 3D visualization in military operations depends on the ability of personnel with minimal graphics experience to create virtual environments quickly and accurately by leveraging data-driven customization of content from model archives with the data available in the command center. Practical 3D visualization depends on standardized scene autogeneration. The Extensible 3D (X3D) Graphics family of specifications is approved by the International Standards Organization (ISO) as the Web-based format for the interchange and rendering of 3D scenes. Previous work has demonstrated that an archive of X3D scenes, such as the Scenario Authoring and Visualization for Advanced Graphical Environments (SAVAGE) library, can be used to autogenerate sophisticated 3D tactical environments. Assembling and making sense of the data necessary to autogenerate a 3D environment requires context and good documentation, best accomplished through metadata. Metadata also supports data-centric, component-based design; key philosophies in promoting interoperability of networked applications. Coupled with recent developments in X3D, enhanced features of the Savage X3D Model archives are now sufficiently mature to support rapid generation of tactical environments. This thesis proposes an XML metadata standard to collect and organize the information necessary to create and populate a tactical 3D virtual environment: the Savage Modeling and Analysis Language (SMAL). The logical extension of a well designed standard is the ability to cross the boundaries of usage, allowing simulators to share data with command and control (C2) suites and mission planning tools based on the construction of a virtual scene. SMAL provides the informational "glue" necessary to perform tactical modeling, simulation, and analysis using networked, physics-based X3D virtual environments.

Tesis para optar al grado de Magíster en Administración (MBA) / David Valdés Cotroneo [Parte I Análisis estratégico y de mercado], Patrichs Rosales Maturana [Parte II Análisis organizativo y financiero] / David Valdés Cotroneo [Parte I]no envía autorización para acceso a texto completo de su documento. / En Chile, al 2014 existe una venta de 8.586.545 unidades de Smartphone, según cifras de IDC Chile. Además de acuerdo al último informe anual elaborado por la Subsecretaría de Telecomunicaciones, el 73% de los accesos a internet son móviles, principalmente Smartphone, alcanzando los 5,5 millones de conexiones desde este tipo de dispositivos. Un estudio del Pew Research Center analizó el uso de la telefonía móvil y la internet en 24 países emergentes, incluyendo a Chile y demostrando el crecimiento de nuestro país en estas áreas, demostrando que las redes sociales se han convertido en el uso más común de las conexiones de internet en Chile, alcanzando un 76% de penetración, siendo el mantener el contacto con amigos y familia su uso más común (96%), seguido de compartir opiniones sobre música y películas (79%). Además según la investigación del centro Pew, un 69% de los usuarios de internet en Chile se conecta todos los días. En este escenario nace SocialRoom, compañía virtual y cuya propuesta de valor consiste en proporcionar una aplicación de Smartphone innovadora, la cual permitirá que sus usuarios puedan obtener información en tiempo real, fácil y gratis. La información es sobre perfiles de otros usuarios ubicados en las cercanías, con el fin de facilitar el compartir los intereses en común, en los ámbitos de las relaciones interpersonales como amistad, amor, negocios, trabajo, deportes, hobbies u otros. La propuesta de SocialRoom se diferencia de sus competidores, al adaptar sus servicios para atender de forma efectiva las necesidades específicas de cada usuario y cliente, para nuestros usuarios se generará una alarma en tiempo real y georeferenciada, en donde se podrán contactar y compartir con otros usuarios de acuerdo a sus intereses. Asimismo la aplicación entregará la posibilidad de que sus usuarios creen grupos específicos de 2 o más personas con interés o hobbies en común, con el fin de exponencial los beneficios de estar en un red social, creando por ejemplo un social room (salón social) de “Running de Santiago, Músicos Chile, Fútbol de Melipilla, etc. Además a nuestros clientes se les ofrecerá la posibilidad de que puedan publicar sus banner publicitarios georeferenciados y segmentados dentro de nuestra aplicación. SocialRoom no supone una alta inversión inicial, ya que solamente se necesitan $43.904.710 que serán capital propio y presenta los positivos resultados operacionales presentados en este plan de negocios, alcanzando una TIR de 69%, un VAN de $116.849.319 y un período de recuperación de 4 años.

In this dissertation, a new method of interaction with virtual reality (VR) has been presented. The VR environment, developed in this work provides a realistic and immersive environment that is developed for studying human’s spatial cognition abilities. Different technical aspects of the implementation are described. To improve the accuracy of the experiments, a new method for comparing and analyzing trajectories has been presented. A set of human subject experiments have been conducted using the developed platform. The first experiment was based on an ordinary computer, a joystick and 40 cognitively healthy participants within the age range of 19 to 82 years. Participants were asked to perform the VR spatial cognition test by navigating in the VR environment. It was found that computer usage skills had an effect on the overall performance of the participants as well as motion sickness; such an effect was undesirable. To resolve both problems, a novel input device made from the combination of a wheelchair and a motion capture unit, called VRNChair was developed. The VRNChair allows the participant to move physically in the real world in order to navigate in the VR environment. This allows participants to have a more intuitive interaction with the VR environment. Since the participant physically experiences the motion seen in the VR, motion sickness is minimized. A test based on two age groups, 34 young (< 40 years) and 20 older (60+ years) participants was performed. The results showed no difference between using the VRNChair or the joystick for the young participants while it showed considerable improvement among the older participants. Furthermore, it was noted that participants became distracted while using the VRNChair, Hence, a head mounted display (HMD) was added to the platform. A test with 14 males showed less distraction to the participant by using the HMD. Overall, the VR environment designed in this work passed all the validation experiments successfully. It offers a novel solution to overcome induced motion sickness experienced as a side effect of VR environments. / October 2016

The use of 'Information and Communication Technologies' (ICT's) is revolutionizing the way of learning, teaching and playing of new generations and modern organizations.We can appreciate how in many cases people learn more due to their surroundings (classmates, learning situations, elements and institutions with which they interact), than because of the specific course teacher. In this article I propose we share a particular perspective concerning the playful aspect of the multimedia contents for education projects based on 'e-learning' (electronic learning) and 'Blended Learning' (mixed format that combines the best of the real and virtual world) / El uso de las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación (TICs) está revolucionando la forma de aprender, enseñar y jugar de las nuevas generaciones y las organizaciones modernas. Incluso, podemos apreciar cómo -en muchos casos- las personas aprenden más gracias al entorno (compañeros, situación de aprendizaje, elementos e institución con la que interactúan), que por los contenidos específicos o el docente del curso. En este artículo propongo compartir una mirada particular sobre el aspecto lúdico de la producción de contenidos multimediales para proyectos de educación basados en modalidades de “e-Learning” (aprendizaje electrónico) y “Blended Learning” (formato mixto que combina lo mejor del mundo real y del virtual).

Context: Recent trends show that there is a tremendous shift from IT companies following traditional methods by hosting their applications/systems in self-managed on premise data centers to using the so-called cloud data centers. Cloud computing has received immense popularity due to its architecture and the ease of usage. Due to this increase in demand and shift in practices, there has been a tremendous increase in number of data centers over a period, resulting in increase of energy consumption. In this thesis work, a research is carried out on optimizing the energy consumption of a typical cloud data center. OpenStack cloud computing software is chosen as the platform in this research. We have used live migration as a key aspect in this research. Objectives: In this research, our objectives are as follows: Design an OpenStack testbed to implement the migration of virtual machines. To estimate the energy consumption of the data center. To design a heuristic algorithm to evaluate the performance metrics and to optimize the overall energy consumption. Methods: We have used PowerAPI, a software tool to estimate the energy consumption of hosts as well as virtual machines. A heuristic algorithm is designed and implemented in an instrumental OpenStack testbed to optimize the energy consumption. Server consolidation and load balancing of virtual machines methodologies are used in the heuristic algorithm design. Our research is carried out against the functionality of Nova scheduler of OpenStack. Results: Results section describes the values of performance metrics yielded by carrying out the experiment. The obtained results showed that energy can be optimized significantly by modifying the way OpenStack nova scheduler can work. The experiment is carried out on vanilla OpenStack and OpenStack with the heuristic algorithm in place, In the second case, the nova scheduler algorithms are not used but the heuristic algorithm is used instead. The CPU utilization and CPU load were noticed to be higher than the metrics observed in case of OpenStack with nova scheduler. Energy consumption is observed to be lesser than the consumption in OpenStack design with nova scheduler. Conclusions: The research tells that energy consumption can be optimized significantly using desired algorithms without compromising the service quality it offers. However, the design impacts on CPU slightly as the metrics are observed to be higher when compared to that in case of OpenStack with nova scheduler. Although it won’t have noticeable impact on the system.

The accrediting and nursing organizations are promoting patient safety and well-being by emphasizing clinical language proficiency. This presents a challenge for English as second language (ESL) nursing students in learning language skills for the clinical environment. This study explicates the experiences and reflections from nursing students, who are not native English speakers that used a virtual simulation program called vSim in relation to clinical language skills. Five students participated in this study. A qualitative study utilizing hermeneutic phenomenological methodology was used to collect experiential data and then was interpreted according to Van Manen’s (1990) data analysis method. Themes of confidence, patient safety, knowledge transfer from classroom to clinical, communication within the clinical environment, and acquisition of language skills emerged from the interviews and reflective journals. This research study shows that the use of a non -immersive virtual simulation provides a positive contribution to ESL nursing students’ experiences with clinical language skills and can provide nursing educators another teaching strategy to assist ESL nursing students achieve clinical language competency. / Graduate / 0569 / sh_samwel@rogers.com

This thesis focuses upon a series of empirical studies which examine communication and learning in online glocal communities within higher education in Sweden. A recurring theme in the theoretical framework deals with issues of languaging in virtual multimodal environments as well as the making of identity and negotiation of meaning in these settings; analyzing the activity, what people do, in contraposition to the study of how people talk about their activity. The studies arise from netnographic work during two online Italian for Beginners courses offered by a Swedish university. Microanalyses of the interactions occurring through multimodal video-conferencing software are amplified by the study of the courses’ organisation of space and time and have allowed for the identification of communicative strategies and interactional patterns in virtual learning sites when participants communicate in a language variety with which they have a limited experience. The findings from the four studies included in the thesis indicate that students who are part of institutional virtual higher educational settings make use of several resources in order to perform their identity positions inside the group as a way to enrich and nurture the process of communication and learning in this online glocal community. The sociocultural dialogical analyses also shed light on the ways in which participants gathering in discursive technological spaces benefit from the opportunity to go to class without commuting to the physical building of the institution providing the course. This identity position is, thus, both experienced by participants in interaction, and also afforded by the ‘spaceless’ nature of the online environment.

Presentación realizada en el marco de las VI Jornadas Nacionales de Bibliotecas Universitarias:"REDESCUBRIENDO LA EDUCACIÓN SUPERIOR EN LA ERA DEL CONOCIMIENTO", realizado 28-30 de Mayo del 2014, Lima. Perú. / Los Centros de Información de la Universidad de Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas (UPC) implementan el Servicio de referencia virtual, a través de la plataforma Question Point, en el año 2009, con el soporte tecnológico de OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) y ante la necesidad de los usuarios que demandaban un canal de comunicación online, que les permita realizar sus consultas académicas, referentes a los servicios que ofrecen los Centros de información. La implementación de este servicio ha permitido atender hasta la fecha 6534 consultas vía email (formulario web) y chat, lo que no solo ha servido para satisfacer las consultas de los usuarios sino también para formarlos en estrategias de búsquedas y en el uso correcto de los servicios físicos y digitales que ofrecemos a la comunidad universitaria. A partir del año 2011, se integra un Qwidget de chat del Question Point en el Aula Virtual de los alumnos, debido a que se identifica a esta última, como el ambiente virtual más utilizado por los alumnos, al consultar los materiales de enseñanza de sus cursos. Esta estrategia tiene como finalidad que los alumnos puedan encontrar en su principal medio de interacción virtual, una nueva alternativa de comunicación con los Centros de Información, para la resolución de sus consultas referentes a la búsqueda de fuentes de información bibliográfica así como también para solicitar orientación en el uso de los distintos servicios que se ofrecen. Esta estrategia ha dado como resultado que en el año 2013 el número de consultas vía chat se incremente en un 73% respecto al año 2011. Asimismo, cabe resaltar que en promedio el 59% de las consultas vía chat son realizadas desde el Qwidget insertado en el Aula Virtual. Finalmente, un dato resaltante es que el 74% de las consultas recibidas son a través del canal del chat, lo cual indica que existe una marcada tendencia de los usuarios al uso de estos servicios, por lo que se recomienda a otras áreas de la universidad, tomar esta experiencia como modelo para la atención de las consultas que reciben de sus usuarios.

Realistic human models are widely used in variety of applications. Much research has been carried out on improving realism of virtual humans from various aspects, such as body shapes, hair, and facial expressions and so on. In most occasions, these virtual humans need to wear garments. However, it is time-consuming and tedious to dress a human model using current software packages [Maya2004]. Several methods for dressing virtual humans have been proposed recently [Bourguignon2001, Turquin2004, Turquin2007 and Wang2003B]. The method proposed by Bourguignon et al [Bourguignon2001] can only generate 3D garment contour instead of 3D surface. The method presented by Turquin et al. [Turquin2004, Turquin2007] could generate various kinds of garments from sketches but their garments followed the shape of the body and the side of a garment looked not convincing because of using simple linear interpolation. The method proposed by Wang et al. [Wang2003B] lacked interactivity from users, so users had very limited control on the garment shape.This thesis proposes a framework for dressing virtual humans to obtain convincing dressing results, which overcomes problems existing in previous papers mentioned above by using nonlinear interpolation, level set-based shape modification, feature constraints and so on. Human models used in this thesis are reconstructed from real human body data obtained using a body scanning system. Semantic information is then extracted from human models to assist in generation of 3 dimensional (3D) garments. The proposed framework allows users to dress virtual humans using garment patterns and sketches. The proposed dressing method is based on semantic virtual humans. A semantic human model is a human body with semantic information represented by certain of structure and body features. The semantic human body is reconstructed from body scanned data from a real human body. After segmenting the human model into six parts some key features are extracted. These key features are used as constraints for garment construction.Simple 3D garment patterns are generated using the techniques of sweep and offset. To dress a virtual human, users just choose a garment pattern, which is put on the human body at the default position with a default size automatically. Users are allowed to change simple parameters to specify some sizes of a garment by sketching the desired position on the human body.To enable users to dress virtual humans by their own design styles in an intuitive way, this thesis proposes an approach for garment generation from user-drawn sketches. Users can directly draw sketches around reconstructed human bodies and then generates 3D garments based on user-drawn strokes. Some techniques for generating 3D garments and dressing virtual humans are proposed. The specific focus of the research lies in generation of 3D geometric garments, garment shape modification, local shape modification, garment surface processing and decoration creation. A sketch-based interface has been developed allowing users to draw garment contour representing the front-view shape of a garment, and the system can generate a 3D geometric garment surface accordingly. To improve realism of a garment surface, this thesis presents three methods as follows. Firstly, the procedure of garment vertices generation takes key body features as constraints. Secondly, an optimisation algorithm is carried out after generation of garment vertices to optimise positions of garment vertices. Finally, some mesh processing schemes are applied to further process the garment surface. Then, an elaborate 3D geometric garment surface can be obtained through this series of processing. Finally, this thesis proposes some modification and editing methods. The user-drawn sketches are processed into spline curves, which allow users to modify the existing garment shape by dragging the control points into desired positions. This makes it easy for users to obtain a more satisfactory garment shape compared with the existing one. Three decoration tools including a 3D pen, a brush and an embroidery tool, are provided letting users decorate the garment surface by adding some small 3D details such as brand names, symbols and so on. The prototype of the framework is developed using Microsoft Visual Studio C++,OpenGL and GPU programming.

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / The goal of much work in Virtual Environments (VEs) to date has been to produce innovative technology but until recently, there has been very little user-centered, usability-focused research in VEs that will turn interesting applications into usable ones. There is beginning to be at least some awareness of the need for usability engineering within the VE community. A handful of articles address usability concerns for particular parts of the VE usability space. From this point Gabbard and Hix [1997] has proposed a taxonomy about usability characteristics in VEs to help VE usability engineers and designers. This taxonomy can be used to learn characteristics of VEs or to develop usability engineering methodologies specifically for VEs. In this study, we built hypermedia representation of the taxonomy and evaluated the effectiveness of the user interface by using scenario based formative usability engineering method that developed by Hix and Hartson [1993]. First, we discussed the need for usability engineering for VEs and took a look at a proposed usability engineering methodology [Gabbard and others, 1999] for VEs. Second we implemented hypermedia based web-site taxonomy and then evaluated it iteratively. Last, we added a new study to show the dynamic nature of web-site application. / Lieutenant Junior Grade, Turkish Navy