O3D-Based Game Learning Environments for Cultural Heritage Online ...

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O3D-Based Game Learning Environments for Cultural Heritage Online Education Lu Wang1,*, Jian-wei Guo2, Cheng-lei Yang1, Hai-seng Zhao2, and Xiang-xu Meng1 1

School of Computer Science and Technology, Shandong University, Ji Nan 250101, China 2 School of Software College, Shandong University, Ji Nan 250101, China [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract. This paper describes an approach, where an O3D-based virtual environment for learning cultural heritage is combined with a game environment to provide a friendly environment that makes learning more pleasant. We describe the game flow, design approach, and the exploration-based O3D API for creating interactive learning environment first. By using interactive teaching and learning system and multimedia exhibition methods, the game can arouse the enthusiasm of players’ learning. Keywords: Educational games, interactive teaching, multimedia exhibition, O3D.

1 Introduction China has a long history and splendid civilization. The former worthies have left us rich cultural relics and heritage. Museums play an important role in the social life, which exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage, for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment. However, the method to display contents in the museum is limited by space, funding and other factors, many hidden cultural relics in the treasury can not be displayed. Compared with the physical museums, digital museums are free of space-time constraint. Also the collections are digitalized, which can not only protect the expensive museum resources, but also make more resources be shared. Although digital museums greatly improve the use of museum information, the interest in learning traditional knowledge is not so high from the user's point of view for the purpose of knowledge learning. With the wide availability of online social and educational websites, online multimedia is widely used for education to provide better concept representation. What’s more, rather than traditional paper and pencil tests, immersive virtual and game environments in educational settings have been receiving increasing interest for several years because of its capability to improve student learning, satisfaction and engagement. During the research of these educational game environments, two questions are * Corresponding Author. X. Zhang et al. (Eds.): Edutainment 2010, LNCS 6249, pp. 417–428, 2010. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010

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proposed: How to help learners construct deeper understanding of challenging knowledge through their experiences in a virtual environment? And how to help students learn in a virtual environment so that they can creatively and flexibly transfer or apply their new knowledge and skills to new situations and contexts? Concerning these problems, our vision is to provide publicly accessible multimedia and game based education system anywhere, at anytime and to anyone. We discuss the online cultural heritage education framework by integrating the main components of education (learning, teaching, communicating, as well as adaptive testing) for students training. Users can use multimedia in the game and interact with the system efficiently. Also, the game can arouse the enthusiasm of palyers’ learning. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: Section 2 outlines some examples of storytelling based games for education. Section 3 describes our game flow and O3D-based system design framework. Section 4 describes implementation of this virtual environment and some key techniques used in this system. Section 5 describes some evaluation results. Finally, some concluding remarks and future work are given in Section 6.

2 Background Online games have become popular not only among young users but also among adults. The positive side of games was first discovered in the fields of psychology and sociology, the research found that the players can benefit from learning, while still enjoying their satisfaction through playing games [1-3]. Thus, research into educational computer games was initiated. A large number of publications propose new games to educate in different fields [4-6]. Recently, games can cooperate with virtual storytelling, which immerses a user in a virtual world and makes him a participant of a virtual story. Virtual storytelling has high educational potential. It enables a user to interact with virtual objects and examine their properties, acquire information provided by virtual tutors and control the volume and subject of this information dynamically. Virtual museum is a natural application of virtual storytelling [7]. It is possible to reconstruct museums in virtual environment and enable more people to visit the virtual world or create virtual exhibitions that never existed. By using virtual storytelling technology they can create a virtual guide, who is able to make escorted tours, i.e. to plan a route, describe the exhibits and answer questions. Another popular game-like environment today is Second Life [8]. Second Life is an online 3D virtual world developed by Linden lab. It provides an immersive environment where users are able to create a digital character or avatar, and interact with people from around the world. Second Life is currently being used by a wide range of educational organizations as a platform for engaging students in learning across a range of subject areas, including colleges, universities (e.g. Harvard, Ohio University, Stanford, University of Edinburgh, etc.) and libraries. It offers a fun, creative space where students can engage in rich, sensory, immersive experiences. Second Life is particularly appealing to the gamer generation. There are a range of educational projects currently running in Second Life. Such as the New Media Consortium (NMC) campus is the largest educational presence in Second Life and supports event, classes,

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demonstrations, and art exhibitions. Others, like pioneering Suffern Middle School are examining how to use Second Life to enhance the learning of students on the Teen Grid. Second Life is an ideal platform for engaging students in creating their own learning activities, experiences and environments.

3 Overview and Architecture Our cultural heritage education system is to create attractive immersive environment that enables students to enjoy virtual immersive experience and to be actively engaged in learning. During this section, we will give an overview of the game, including the scenario, the game engine we choose for the project, the design architecture of our system, data acquisition and presentation methods. 3.1 Scenario for Cultural Heritage Education System Our learning scenario is based on history and cultural heritage information in Shandong Province of China for school students or enthusiasts of history. In this virtual world, students could discover cultural relics, such as the Han tomb located in Shuangru mountain, where they can excavation more than 2400 relics buried with Northern Qi Wang, including bronze, jade, lacquer, iron, pottery, gold cake, horse carriage, poultry and so on. After students enter this virtual world, they meet an old wise man first, who can give them clues, help them find the right place and teach them knowledge of history. Students can also keep relics to themselves if they can answer the history or other related background questions correctly. After students collect a certain number of relics and get enough knowledge, they can gain virtual land on which they can build and develop their own museums to exhibit these historical relics and also provide a space for others to learn inside. What’s more, the new beginner can be updated to experts after they have accumulated sufficient experiences, and also can help others to identify relics or impart knowledge. 3.2 Game Engine In the computer game, scenario, art design, music, animation felt by players are all controlled by game engine. So game engine is the core software component or the main program of a computer game and can control all the game functions. So far, there have been many game engines all over the world, such as Unreal engine, Quake II engine, LithTech engine, Delta3D engine and so on. Those engines are fullyfeatured, and there exist one or more complete games and simulations based on each of these engines. So, it is hard to say which one is the best. With the wide availability of online social and educational websites, there have been numerous attempts to add a third dimension to the Web over the years. Unfortunately, most of them have limitations: Open formats like X3D never gained much popularity, Flash-based 3D engines are limited by the performance of the Flash runtime, and commercial offerings, such as virtool, can cost several hundreds to several thousands dollars. A new project from Google, O3D, aims to overcome these limitations by providing a free, open source, cross-platform and cross-browser plug-in that delivers the flexibility

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and speed of a low-level graphics API like OpenGL or Direct3D, while addressing the constraints of running inside a web browser. O3D allows 3d content (games, 3D model viewers, product demos, and more) to be rendered and displayed in a browser window, despite the user's computer configuration. And because O3D is free to use, there's no cost barrier. So we take O3D for choice to implement our simulation. 3.3 Design Architecture It can be seen from Figure 1 that our system uses browser/server architecture. The browser and the server run in different processes, the browser side includes the O3D scene graph API for display, utilities module for control, interface module for users’ browse and decision-making. The O3D JavaScript application code is completely contained in an HTML document that is loaded into a web browser. The server side includes O3D core software, and data server including terrain & map data, 3D models, texture data, motion data, video and other data mainly used for users’ control data, changing the state of the world and sending back the changed data to the user side.

Fig. 1. System Browser/Server architecture

3.4 Data Acquisition and Presentation The digital museum of Shandong University (http://museum.sdu.edu.cn) provides us a lot resources and services, including more than ten thousands of digital cultural relics from Xizhou dynasty to Qing dynasty of Shandong province of China. Most digital information of relics in our system is offered by this museum of Shandong University, also a few acquisitioned by websites or books. In our system, all information of relics and users is stored in MySQL database. Each cultural relic has basic text instruction, such as name, age, excavated location, texture, shape, usage and so on. Also many of them have image, 3D model and video commentary information. We also design a lot “questions & answers” for typical

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relics. For user’s database, our system records their registration information, character information, ranking points, process of their journey, collections by users, and related information of their personal museum. In our ranking system, three kinds of points for users are earned throughout the journey: 1) Wisdom points (for ranking purpose) can be earned by learning from the old wise man or other expert users and answering questions. 2) Energy points (to maintain the life) can be earned while adventuring and meanwhile make you grow in power. 3) Lucky points (for trading purpose like that in real life) can be earned while adventuring and used to buy useful tools and medicines in passed-by shops. Those items may help complete tasks or save life from dangers.

4 Implementation of the Virtual Environment Our cultural heritage learning game is an Internet-based 3D virtual environment. To access the virtual environment, users need to register and choose their own motional avatars first. After that they can enter the virtual environment and start their adventure. In this section, details of the implementation of the virtual world and some key techniques will be introduced. 4.1 Characters and Interactions Characters in our system are classified as player characters and non-player characters. Player characters are created by users, and non-player characters are created by our system, such as the old wise man and relics evaluation expert. Player characters can interact with non-player characters. For example, the old wise man will talk to players, when players get close to them. Players may answer old man’s questions in pop-up windows and reply him or accept tasks. Players are also allowed to chat with each other. All dialog history is recorded in “Chat Log”. Some non-player characters exist in the games to teach players, ask questions, assign tasks, give information or hints, and direct players step by step. So players should find nonplayer characters to continue the game or gain points. Characters model includes 3D model, skeleton, animation, and behavior. 3D models are available commercially and in open source, and they even can be created and modified by using Maya, 3DS Max and Character Studio. Some characters in our system are shown in Figure 2.

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Fig. 2. Characters. (a) Old wise man; (b) Relics evaluation expert; (c) Players.

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4.2 Terrain Generation In our system we use 3D terrain created by 3D Max combined with height map including the hypsography information to generate terrain together. As shown in Figure 3, mountains including shuangru mountain are created by 3DS Max. City for players’ residence and daily activities is surrounded by mountains, our system offers a lot height maps for the inner city. Players can choose their favorite as the terrain, and our system can locate buildings and trees adaptively according to the height map user chooses.

Fig. 3. Virtual environment terrain and height maps

Height map in our example is a 500×500 pixel grey-scale image (Figure 3), where the brighter the color, the higher the elevation of the terrain will be. We create a set of vertices, where each vertex is represented by one pixel of the height map. Then we create the set of triangles that will make up the surface of the terrain. Then we need to combine a phong shader and texture mapping together to make the terrain looks real. 4.3 Virtual Learning Environment After players enter the virtual environment, the interface of the game is as shown in Figure 4. In order to make the interface clear, only basic information of the player is shown in the top left corner, and a thumbnail of the scene in the top right corner shows the player’s current position, which can be folded and unfolded. The name information of places is marked on the small map, by clicking the places in the small map, players can jump to the right place in 3D scene rapidly. As we have introduced in section 4.1, when players get close to the non-player characters, they will talk to players according to the players’ current status. As shown in Figure 5(a), when players meet the old wise man the first time, the old wise man will introduce himself, also the purpose and task processing method of the game to players. The relic will remind the player to go to the relics evaluation center to do appraisal after being excavated (see Figure 5(b)). After player reaches the relics evaluation center, the relics evaluation expert will lead him to take out his collections and put on the desk (Figure 5(c)) and introduce the collections’ details to the player (Figure 5(d)).

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Fig. 4. Interface of the virtual environment. (a)Thumbnail of the scene is shown; (b)Thumbnail of the scene is folded.

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Fig. 5. Interaction. (a) Player meets the old wise man the first time; (b) Player discover the relic; (c) Player meet the relics evaluation expert; (d) The relics evaluation expert gives the player evaluation results.

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For history and culture education, one of the most important challenges for teachers is the history recorded by text, which is really difficult for students’ understanding and difficult to inspire students’ activities to learn. In our virtual environment, multimedia exhibition and interactive teaching & learning methods are used. We take indoor museum for example, the player can walk though this world selecting the objects in the scene. After selecting an object, its introduction is shown by text and images and its pronunciation can be heard, even more the related video or flash can be played (Figure 6 (a)). After users learned the corresponding information of this museum, the old wise man will put questions to the player based on the knowledge he has learned (Figure 6 (b)), if the user can answer the question correctly, the wisdom of himself will be increased. In this way, students obtain progressive learning based on the comprehension and knowledge of history and culture.

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Fig. 6. (a) Knowledge teaching; (b) Knowledge testing

In order to make the learning process more figurative, we also use animation method for some important historical idioms. Such as users will discover the Han tomb of Northern Qi Wang after they reach the top of the Shuangru mountain by using the tools offered by the system (Fugure 7(a-b)). After that, they can go to the bottom of the tomb to have an overview of the tomb (Fugure 7(c)) or have a close view of some special relics they have interests and also can excavate relics out (Fugure 7(d)).

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Fig. 7. Tomb excavation process

Another example is the conformation of the coffin in Han dynasty. After user clicked the coffin, they could see the animation of how a three-coffins and two-covers tomb is constructed, as shown in Figure 8. By using these methods, students’ learning activities can be dramatically inspired.

Fig. 8. A three- coffins and two- covers tomb constructing process

Our system also provides a tool for players to create their own personal museums after they collected enough relics and enough experience. By using the 3D museum construction tool offered by our system (as shown in Figure 9), players can create their personal museums to exhibit their collections interactively with their own style and subject, such as according to decade. And users can also set their constructed personal museum open to others to view, learn information or communicate inside, which can not only help users organize and store their collections expediently, but also dramatically inspire users’ interests, creativity and self-determination while processing traditional culture heritage sources. What’s more, by using this method, users can learn more knowledge and will be more active to search for new heritage to show to feed their vanity. Figure 9 shows the personal museum construction interface and process. Players can construct the shape or outline of their exhibition hall first, set up booths and put collected relics on the booths interactively. The system offer tools for player to adjust the position of relics flexibly. After players finish their construction, they can set this personal museum visible to others, where they can communicate with each other

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Fig. 9. Personal museum’s construction process

inside. Compared with other 3D indoor scene construction tools, this system is quite easy to learn, especially for young students.

5 Evaluation In order to find out whether the game environment is in fact motivating and educationally beneficial to students, we conducted a user test for primary school students of grade four. The experiment took place in multi-media lab. Teachers were asked to observe their students while they were studying in the game, and lab assistants offered help to students with the interaction of the game. A pre-test is firstly performed for students to learn how many knowledge they have mastered. Then a post-test is performed after the students have learned in this virtual environment. The testing results comparison shows that, in the post test, the students made 30.25% less mistakes than in the pre-test on average. We also did some tests about the game, including originality, funny, challenge, edutainment, competition, storytelling and interactivity. The tests results are as shown in Figure 10. It is easy to see that most players think the system is useful for education and attractive. But the challenge of the game is very weak, also the storytelling way and the interaction method should be improved. The results of the evaluation show that educational virtual games can be very motivating while retaining or even improving the educational effects on students. But the traditional classroom education is still very important and preferred by students. So games could be used as a supplemental education way, especially after class.

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Fig. 10. User evaluation test results

6 Conclusion In this project, we are building a game based virtual environment for cultural heritage education. By using interactive teaching and learning system and multimedia exhibition methods, players’ learning enthusiasm can be greatly aroused. It remains much work to do before we create a fully common system. We need to not only develop pedagogical techniques, but also human-level intelligent behavior that we can advance the intelligence of agents in our simulation. And a better optimization should be conducted. Acknowledgments. This work is supported by the China national natural science foundation (60703028), china postdoctoral science foundation (20090461221), Shandong province outstanding young scientist research award fund (BS2009DX026), Shandong province postdoctoral special funds for innovative projects (200902032). We wish to thank Yuan Wang, Quan Wang and Yan Jin for artist designing. We wish to thank the museum of Shandong University for sharing the relics database.

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6. Steinkuehler, C.A.: Learning in Massively Multiplayer Online Games. In: International Conference of the Learning Sciences, Los Angeles, CA, pp. 521–528 (2004) 7. Ibanez, J., Aylett, R., Ruiz-Rodarte, R.: Storytelling in virtual environments from a virtual guide perspective. In: Virtual Reality, vol. 7, pp. 30–42 (2003) 8. Second Life Official Website, http://secondlife.com/