Chris Liebold
In the ECoClass-VR project, which is part of the AUDIC-TIVE priority program, we investigate the suitability of audiovisual immersive virtual environments (IVEs) for a "real-world" assessment of adult and child cognitive performance in classroom-like environments under different visuospatial and acoustic conditions. Existing knowledge in this area comes predominantly from auditory experimental paradigms with typically simple acoustic replicas. So far, little attention has been paid to visual information processing without considering the relevant audiovisual aspects. In the ECoClass-VR project, we plan to successively increase the realism of three existing psychological testing paradigms, which will first be translated into audiovisual tasks and then increased in terms of their realism with respect to cognitive tasks and IVEs. For this purpose, we use two different types of scene visualization: immersive 360° videos, i.e. recorded 360° video scenes, and Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) based scenes generated with software such as Unity. In this paper, we present initial results and explain how we captured and generated the corresponding IVEs. We describe the challenges as well as the technical solutions to achieve a near-photorealistic representation of two virtual scenes of a classroom and to allow the flexibility needed to perform the targeted cognitive performance tests.
Fremerey, S.; Reimers, C.; Leist, L.; Spilski, J.; Klatte, M.; , Fels, J. and Raake, A. Generation of audiovisual immersive virtual environments to evaluate cognitive performance in classroom type scenarios DAGA 2021, Vienna. Researchgate
