Story Editing for AR Experiences

Abstract

In recent years, augmented and virtual reality (XR) technologies have made considerable strides forward. However, while XR worlds become increasingly intertwined with our lives, little emphasis has been put on populating these worlds. The Intelligent Content Creation Tools for Augmented and Virtual Reality (ICCTARVR) project is trying to change that by creating tools to simplify the process of inhabiting XR worlds with intelligent virtual characters.

So far, scripting stories for experiences in the ICCTARVR project was done in code, which makes it a tedious and error-prone process. The goal of the tool proposed in this thesis is to make the authoring of virtual characters more accessible and faster. It allows expert users to quickly create medium-sized narrative experiences without requiring knowledge of the under- lying systems. Moreover, the deployment of the story to the ICCTARVR prototype is seamless and flexible, leading to rapid prototyping and testing.

A user study finds our tool to be intuitive and easy to use. The participants gave our tool an averaged System Usability Scale (SUS) score of 78.125, which is considered to be a score between good and excellent.