Papers from an October 2001 conference explore technologies and applications of enhanced environments, with a focus on the specific areas of virtual heritage, immersive art and creative technology, and virtual design in industry, architecture, and medicine. Topics include visualizing archaeological reconstruction, cemetery preservation and laser scanning, interactive TV, and a stereo vision-based augmented reality system with marker and natural feature tracking. Other topics include modeling electronic arts and ubiquitous computing in a virtual environment, design considerations for an oxygen flute, character- driven story generation in interactive storytelling, and the role of place in cyberspace. This work lacks a subject index. c. Book News Inc.

The 13th International Conference on Virtual Systems and Multimedia was held in Brisbane, Australia in September 2007. This was the first time that VSMM was sited in Australia. The Australian conference theme reflected the country’s cultural heritage, both recent and past – Exchange and Experience in Space and Place. Of the many papers submitted under this theme we were able to identify three core sub-themes: Virtual Heritage, Applied Technologies and Virtual Environments. With a truly international flavor, these sub-themes covered the diverse areas of heritage site and artifact reconstruction and analysis, Australian Aboriginal cultural heritage, training, notions of spirituality, human – computer interaction in virtual environments, 3D modelling, remote collaboration and virtual agents. This made for rich, varied and lively conference session debates. Ninety-seven papers were submitted. Of these, 56 were accepted for inclusion in the general conference proceedings. Of these, 18 were further reviewed and selected for this Springer publication. The authors of these papers were invited to revise their papers following feedback from the conference before inclusion in this volume. Many people contributed to the conference. We first wish to thank the Virtual Systems and Multimedia Society, who provided strong support to the whole process of the preparation of the conference. In particular, we would like to express our thanks to Takeo Ojika, Mario Santana Quintero and Hal Thwaites for their generous support and guidance.

The International Handbook of Virtual Learning Environments was developed to explore Virtual Learning Environments (VLE’s), and their relationships with digital, in real life and virtual worlds. The book is divided into four sections: Foundations of Virtual Learning Environments; Schooling, Professional Learning and Knowledge Management; Out-of-School Learning Environments; and Challenges for Virtual Learning Environments. The coverage ranges across a broad spectrum of philosophical perspectives, historical, sociological, political and educational analyses, case studies from practical and research settings, as well as several provocative "classics" originally published in other settings.

Virtual Humans are becoming more and more popular and used in many applications such as the entertainment industry (in both film and games) and medical applications. This comprehensive book covers all areas of this growing industry including face and body motion, body modelling, hair simulation, expressive speech simulation and facial communication, interaction with 3D objects, rendering skin and clothes and the standards for Virtual Humans. Written by a team of current and former researchers at MIRALab, University of Geneva or VRlab, EPFL, this book is the definitive guide to the area. Explains the concept of avatars and autonomous virtual actors and the main techniques to create and animate them (body and face). Presents the concepts of behavioural animation, crowd simulation, intercommunication between virtual humans, and interaction between real humans and autonomous virtual humans Addresses the advanced topics of hair representation and cloth animation with applications in fashion design Discusses the standards for Virtual Humans, such as MPEG-4 Face Animation and MPEG-4 Body Animation.

This volume comprises the proceedings of the Third International Euro-Mediterranean Conference (EuroMed 2010) on the historical island of Cyprus. The focal point of this conference was digital heritage, which all of us involved in the documentation of cultural heritage continually strive to implement. The excellent selection of papers published in the proceedings reflects in the best possible way the benefits of exploiting modern technological advances for the restoration, preservation and e-documentation of any kind of cultural heritage. Above all, we should always bear in mind that what we do now may be used by people in another century to repair, rebuild or conserve the buildings, monuments, artifacts and landscapes that seem important. Recent events like earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, fires and insurrections show that we can never be too prepared for damage to, and loss of, the physical and, non-tangible elements of our past and, in general, our cultural heritage. To reach this ambitious goal, the topics covered included experiences in the use of innovative recording technologies and methods, and how to take best advantage of the results obtained to build up new instruments and improved methodologies for do- menting in multimedia formats, archiving in digital libraries and managing a cultural heritage. Technological advances are very often reported in detail in specialized fora. This volume of proceedings establishes bridges of communication and channels of co- eration between the various disciplines involved in cultural heritage preservation.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Databases in Networked Information Systems, DNIS 2005, held in Aizu-Wakamatsu, Japan in March 2005. The 17 revised full papers presented together with 8 invited papers were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. The papers are organized in topical sections on information interchange and management systems, Web data management systems, networked information systems applications, and networked information systems implementations.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Tenth International KES Conference on Intelligent Interactive Multimedia Systems and Services: IIMSS-17. It includes 57 full papers organized into topical sections, ranging from visual data processing to big data analytics, and from multimedia to intelligent and cognitive systems. The conference took place as part of the Smart Digital Futures 2017 multi-theme conference, held in Vilamoura, Algarve, Portugal on 21–23 June 2017, which brings together AMSTA, IDT, InHorizons, InMed, SEEL and IIMSS in one venue. It provided an international forum for researchers and scientists to share their work and experiences in the field of multimedia and intelligent interactive systems and services.

The Springer Handbook of Augmented Reality presents a comprehensive and authoritative guide to augmented reality (AR) technology, its numerous applications, and its intersection with emerging technologies. This book traces the history of AR from its early development, discussing the fundamentals of AR and its associated science. The handbook begins by presenting the development of AR over the last few years, mentioning the key pioneers and important milestones. It then moves to the fundamentals and principles of AR, such as photogrammetry, optics, motion and objects tracking, and marker-based and marker-less registration. The book discusses both software toolkits and techniques and hardware related to AR, before presenting the applications of AR. This includes both end-user applications like education and cultural heritage, and professional applications within engineering fields, medicine and architecture, amongst others. The book concludes with the convergence of AR with other emerging technologies, such as Industrial Internet of Things and Digital Twins. The handbook presents a comprehensive reference on AR technology from an academic, industrial and commercial perspective, making it an invaluable resource for audiences from a variety of backgrounds.

This book provides insights into the state of the art of digital cultural heritage using computer graphics, image processing, computer vision, visualization and reconstruction, virtual and augmented reality and serious games. It aims at covering the emergent approaches for digitization and preservation of Cultural Heritage, both in its tangible and intangible facets. Advancements in Digital Cultural Heritage research have been abundant in recent years covering a wide assortment of topics, ranging from visual data acquisition, pre-processing, classification, analysis and synthesis, 3D modelling and reconstruction, semantics and symbolic representation, metadata description, repository and archiving, to new forms of interactive and personalized presentation, visualization and immersive experience provision via advanced computer graphics, interactive virtual and augmented environments, serious games and digital storytelling. Different aspects pertaining to visual computing with regard to tangible (books, images, paintings, manuscripts, uniforms, maps, artefacts, archaeological sites, monuments) and intangible (e.g. dance and performing arts, folklore, theatrical performances) cultural heritage preservation, documentation, protection and promotion are covered, including rendering and procedural modelling of cultural heritage assets, keyword spotting in old documents, drone mapping and airborne photogrammetry, underwater recording and reconstruction, gamification, visitor engagement, animated storytelling, analysis of choreographic patterns, and many more. The book brings together and targets researchers from the domains of computing, engineering, archaeology and the arts, and aims at underscoring the potential for cross-fertilization and collaboration among these communities.

Augmented Reality (AR) refers to the merging of a live view of the physical, real world with context-sensitive, computer-generated images to create a mixed reality. Through this augmented vision, a user can digitally interact with and adjust information about their surrounding environment on-the-fly. Handbook of Augmented Reality provides an extensive overview of the current and future trends in Augmented Reality, and chronicles the dramatic growth in this field. The book includes contributions from world expert s in the field of AR from academia, research laboratories and private industry. Case studies and examples throughout the handbook help introduce the basic concepts of AR, as well as outline the Computer Vision and Multimedia techniques most commonly used today. The book is intended for a wide variety of readers including academicians, designers, developers, educators, engineers, practitioners, researchers, and graduate students. This book can also be beneficial for business managers, entrepreneurs, and investors.