Annotation-Based Development of Explorable Immersive VR/AR Environments

Virtual and augmented reality environments consist of objects that typically interact with other objects and users, leading to evolution of 3D objects and scenes over time. In multiple VR/AR applications in different domains, interactions and temporal properties of 3D content may be represented using general or domain knowledge, which makes them comprehensible to average users or domain experts without an expertise in IT. Logging interactions and their results can be especially useful in VR/AR environments that are intended to monitor and gain knowledge about the system behavior as well as users' behavior and preferences. However, the available approaches to development of VR/AR environments do not enable logging interactions in an explorable way. The main contribution of this paper is a method of developing explorable VR/AR environments on the basis of existing environments developed using well established tools, such as game engines and imperative programming languages. In the approach, interactions can be represented with general or domain knowledge. The method is discussed in the context of an immersive car showroom, which enables acquisition of knowledge about customers' interests and preferences for marketing and merchandising purposes.