Drama and Context in Real-Time Virtual Environments: Use of Pre-Scripted Events as a Part of an Interactive Spatial Mediation Framework

TLDR

The authors aim to develop flexible interactive techniques that embed dramatic mediation of place into virtual environments, providing coherent context and a dramatically engaging virtual place for users. They propose a three‑layer spatial mediation framework that employs an interactive narrative structure to coordinate dramatic camera work, lighting, effects, and sound, and incorporates pre‑scripted events as a layer, illustrating its benefits and challenges with a single‑user prototype. The study provides guidelines for designing virtual environments that integrate narrativity and spatiality, applicable to interactive entertainment, education, and architecture.

Abstract

We suggest that the dramatically engaging mediation of an experi- ence of place should be built in as a fundamental capability of a compelling and meaningful virtual environment (VE). Our main objective is to develop flexible interactive techniques that supply VE's with a coherent context and make the resulting 'virtual place' available to the user in a dramatically engaging way. To support the concept of narrative expressive space, we propose a three-layer multi-purpose spatial mediation framework that utilizes an interactive narrative structure to coordinate stylized dramatic camera work, lighting, effects and sound. We then describe the use of pre-scripted events as a layer in this frame- work and explain the inherent benefits and problems, using a single-user proto- type environment as illustration. The work offers guidelines for the design of VE's to all fields that combine narrativity and spatiality, such as interactive en- tertainment, education and architecture.