Projects

Combatting Postnatal Depression: Exploring The Role of Serious Games in New Parent Support

This study seeks to utilise digital and serious game technologies, along with early detection innovations, to assist perinatal infant mental health (PIMH) clinicians in supporting parents in their third trimester of pregnancy, including both birthing and non-birthing parents. The goal is to address the stigma surrounding postnatal depression (PND), which can become a barrier to seeking timely professional assessment and treatment, and there are limited interventions for those in the pregnancy phase.

Design in Virtual Reality (VR) Racing Games: Engaging the User’s Sense of Speed

The rapid development of realistic simulations in racing games has led to the undermining of a user’s sense of speed, reducing their immersion. This effect is more apparent in Virtual Reality (VR) racing games where users need this immersion to have a comfortable experience. If users are not immersed in the VR racing experience, they will be less engaged as a result of cybersickness. This project aims to develop a framework to assist game developers, and the research field of game design, on understanding how to engage a user’s sense of speed in a VR racing game.

Adaptive Digital Twin Systems for Long-Distance Relationships: Enhancing Intergenerational Companionship Between Parents and Their Adult Children

Long-Distance Relationships (LDRs) involve individuals separated geographically due to factors like work, school, or travel. While much research has focused on romantic relationships or grandparent-grandchild bonds, less attention has been given to the emotional dynamics between parents and their adult children, particularly as global mobility and longer lifespans increase. Maintaining strong emotional connections across distances is crucial for emotional well-being, with communication tools like social media, email, and mobile phones helping bridge the gap.

An analytical framework for better access within Virtual Reality

As Virtual Reality is becoming more mainstream access for disabled people becomes more important, especially those with movement-related disabilities. People with movement-related disabilities are often combined with other forms of physical disabilities and thus are often under-reported here in Australia, This proves to be a problem as movement-related disabilities require specific care. This project will provide a framework to be used to design software and tools that may be used to provide better access to mobility-related disabled people in Virtual Reality.

It’s More Than Emulation - Towards a Proactive Approach to Games Preservation

The games industry has been notoriously neglectful towards the act of preservation since the establishment of the medium, often leaving acts of archival to the eleventh hour. Whilst some of the larger studios, such Electronic Arts have adopted a more inclusive archival process, the damage has already been done, and the consequences are beginning starting to loom over the industry. Around 87% of all games released prior to the advent of digital storefronts are commercially unavailable - a worse survival rate than the legendarily ephemeral American Silent Film era of motion pictures.

Investigating new immersive sound design methods for game engines

Dolby Australia and the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) have joined forces to examine the use of immersive audio in games.  

The project will develop new approaches to sound and game design to create next-level player experiences.  Using practice-based research methods we will create and test a series of game prototypes that feature immersive audio.

With a focus on game/sound design for ‘headphone-first’ immersive audio content creation, a series of prototypes will be developed based on opportunities identified through the literature review and background research.  

Playstyle Driven Procedural Digital Game Personalisation

What: This project is an exploration into the ability of a game to change and adapt in response to the player as they are playing the game. This study looks into the use of preference classification and prediction algorithms (which are traditionally used by YouTube or Netflix) within the context of a digital game. We are exploring the possibility of a system like this allowing a game to procedurally generate content that is specifically and empirically tailored towards the player.

Predicting Acoustics: The auralization of dynamic, real-time virtual environments using supervised learning.

The computational complexity of simulating acoustics makes auralization difficult to achieve in highly dynamic, real-time video game virtual environments. Current methods are either too computationally intensive to run in real-time or require offline baking of acoustic characteristics making it difficult to be used in dynamic environments. Current advancements in machine learning and artificial intelligence may make acoustic prediction a viable path to auralizing virtual environments.

Deep Reinforcement Learning for Navigation in Dynamic Digital Environments

Non-player characters (NPCs) are a crucial component of modern video game development as they directly influence player immersion. A core action of most NPCs is movement, the ability of an agent to take actions in order to navigate from one location in the world to another. The most common approach to navigation is through a Navigation Mesh (NavMesh), a graph representation of the traversable environment. As video game budgets have expanded, so too has the demand for both increased NPC capabilities and world complexity.

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