Dynamic Interactivity Inside the AlloSphere

Charles Roberts, Matthew Wright, JoAnn Kuchera-Morin, and Lance Putnam

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

Abstract:

We present the Device Server, a framework and application driving interaction in the AlloSphere virtual reality environment. The motivation and development of the Device Server stems from the practical concerns of managing multi-user interactivity with a variety of physical devices for disparate performance and virtual reality environments housed in the same physical location. The interface of the Device Server allows users to see how devices are assigned to application functionalities, alter these assignments and save them into configuration files for later use. Configurations defining how applications use devices can be changed on the fly without recompiling or relaunching applications. Multiple applications can be connected to the Device Server concurrently. The Device Server provides several conveniences for performance environments. It can process control data efficiently using Just-In-Time compiled Lua expressions; in doing so it frees processing cycles on audio and video rendering computers. All control signals entering the Device Server can be recorded, saved, and played back allowing performances based on control data to be recreated in their entirety. The Device Server attempts to homogenize the appearance of different control signals to applications so that users can assign any interface element they choose to application functionalities and easily experiment with different control configurations.

Citation:

Charles Roberts, Matthew Wright, JoAnn Kuchera-Morin, and Lance Putnam. 2010. Dynamic Interactivity Inside the AlloSphere. Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.1177883

BibTeX Entry:

  @inproceedings{Roberts2010,
 abstract = {We present the Device Server, a framework and application driving interaction in the AlloSphere virtual reality environment. The motivation and development of the Device Server stems from the practical concerns of managing multi-user interactivity with a variety of physical devices for disparate performance and virtual reality environments housed in the same physical location. The interface of the Device Server allows users to see how devices are assigned to application functionalities, alter these assignments and save them into configuration files for later use. Configurations defining how applications use devices can be changed on the fly without recompiling or relaunching applications. Multiple applications can be connected to the Device Server concurrently. The Device Server provides several conveniences for performance environments. It can process control data efficiently using Just-In-Time compiled Lua expressions; in doing so it frees processing cycles on audio and video rendering computers. All control signals entering the Device Server can be recorded, saved, and played back allowing performances based on control data to be recreated in their entirety. The Device Server attempts to homogenize the appearance of different control signals to applications so that users can assign any interface element they choose to application functionalities and easily experiment with different control configurations.},
 address = {Sydney, Australia},
 author = {Roberts, Charles and Wright, Matthew and Kuchera-Morin, JoAnn and Putnam, Lance},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 doi = {10.5281/zenodo.1177883},
 issn = {2220-4806},
 keywords = {AlloSphere, mapping, performance, HCI, interactivity, Virtual Reality, OSC, multi-user, network},
 pages = {57--62},
 title = {Dynamic Interactivity Inside the AlloSphere},
 url = {http://www.nime.org/proceedings/2010/nime2010_057.pdf},
 year = {2010}
}