Supporting Co-Presence in Populated Virtual Environments by Actor Takeover of Animated Characters

Online social virtual worlds are now becoming widely available on consumer devices including virtual reality headsets. One goal of a virtual world could be to give a user an experience of a crowded environment with many virtual humans. However, gathering enough personnel to control the necessary number of avatars for creating a realistic scene is usually difficult. Additionally, current technology is not capable of fully simulating avatars with behaviours, especially when interaction with users is required. In this paper, we develop a system that enables an actor to take over control of one of a set of avatars. We built an immersive interface that allows an actor to select an avatar to take over and then segue into the currently playing animation. By allowing one person to take control of multiple avatars, we can enhance the plausibility of environments inhabited by simulated characters. In an experiment, we show that in a cafe scenario, one actor can take over the roles of a barista and two customers. Experiment participants reported experiencing the scene as if it were populated by more than one actor. This system and experiment demonstrate the feasibility of one actor controlling multiple avatars sequentially, thus enhancing users’ feelings of being in a populated environment.

1 Introduction

Figure 1:

Scenario with one actor jumping between several “agent avatars” and interacting with the user when necessary. (a) The user enters the scene and discovers three agent avatars. All three agent avatars are playing pre-recorded, loopable clips. Two of them portray customers while the third one acts as the barista. An actor, who is invisible to the user, is ready to take over any of the agent avatars and interact with the user. (b) The actor realizes that the participant intended to interact with agent avatar number 0, who is playing the role of a barista. Consequently, the actor plans to take control of that agent avatar and embody it to respond to and interact with the user. (c) The actor takes control of Avatar0 and is now interacting with the user. Meanwhile, all the other agent avatars continue to play their pre-recorded clips. (d) The actor releases control of Avatar0 and switches to another agent avatar to interact with the user. This creates the illusion that all three agent avatars were being controlled by real humans.