Walk The Street Change The City

GAMIFICATION

29/08

IN URBAN PLANNING

WHY PARTICIPATION?

WHY CITY GAMING?

processing answers by computer, precise database, transparency.

A city is more than bricks and concrete. such a complex system of spatial (private houses, public space, green areas ...) and nonspatial (economy, culture, community ... ) relationships can not be fully understood by a single person. Multidisciplinary cooperation is necessary.

a combination of top-down and bottom-up processes based on constant exchange of information between citizens and authorities. locals help to define problems, wishes, needs. Architects put it together with other professional analyses and suggest solution. public give feedback - define problems, wishes, needs.. etc. etc.

No conversion, reusing data/channels of previous surveys. processing answers by computer, no 2d/3d or spatial conversion.

Manual Connecting 2D answers and 3D space, conversion into virtual designing software.

FIRST SURVEY

REAL 3D SPACE

Virtual games have a large potential to become virals. They can be easily spread, gather and process a big amount of data.

LOOK AT EXAMPLES

IMPORVED BY GAMING

not a collaborative planning (when everyone has the same right to influence decision regardless relationship to the place or expertise)

Presenting issues of real 3D space in virtual 3D space.

not a top-down planning (when authorities makes decisions on their own and citizens just accept results)

Board games (physical) are more personal. It can help the local community to strengthen their bonds, decrease tensions, open discussion.

DESIGNING

Furthermore it does not matter how genious is a plan made by urbanist if it is not turn into reality. Involvement of local people improves the quality of design and increases the chance of its implementation.

PARTICIPATION IS ...

gamification means using principles of games (fun, competing, victory, rewards, friendly understandable interface ) for non-gaming purposes.

PUBLISHING SUGGESTIONS

Converting 3D space issues into 2D questionnaire

The more angles of view, the better analysis. Professionals can provide their expertise, but they will never have such a detailed knowledge of everyday life in a particular location as local residents.

People are often too busy or not enough motivated to participate. They may be scared or bored by discussions and questionnaires. vSo, gamification?

MAIN CATHEGORIES

Cibversion from 3D virtual model into 2D prints

The ideal city suitable for any environment and society does not exist. Every place is unique, therefore it requires a unique solution based on precise analysis of the local environment. but what does the precise analyse require?

manual Connecting 2D answers and 3D space, sorting, storing ...

PROCESSING FEEBACK

CURRENT SITUATION

WALK THE STREET CHANGE THE CITY

CITIZENS IN PLANNING PROCESS

Play the City (Netherland)

Minecraft (Kirtipur Nepal)

Skyline urban planning game

Architekti do ĹĄkol

GAME MECHANICS

360° VIDEOS

GAME ENGINE

VIDEO SHOOTING Video shooting was done with a help of Nokia OZO camera (with a support of CIVIT department of TUT), to achieve maximal immersion during the game experience.

It was a 4k stereoscopic 360 video with a spatial sound of Nokia OZO patented technology.

DEFINING THE POINTS OF INTEREST The choice of the spots for the game was based on the previously made research on the pedestrian activity of Hameenkatu street. We were interested to explore the features of the most popular spots at Hameenkatu, so they were the crossroads between Hameenkatu street and it’s small adjacent streets/pockets. After defining 6 of these spots we started video shooting process.

Platform for a game design for a long time stayed as an open question, as between game engines there were at least two strong competitors in consideration - Unity and Unreal Engine. The main advantage of Unity was a full support and integration with a Nokia OZO SDK, though, as the game was developed by the students of architecture with a minimal background in coding, Unity code-based interface became an obstacle. On the other hand, Unreal Engine happened to be convenient and intuitive node-based platform for game development, very comprehensive even for the people with minimal or no coding skills. Main disadvantage was that Unreal Engine had no native support neither for the Nokia OZO video, nor for OZO spatial audio. The tradeoff was a video conversion with separate audio conversion and audio disaggregation in separate channel files - causing certain loss of the audio/video quality.

Nevertheless, node-based interface turned out to be very flexible and user-friendly, allowing cooperation, fixes and enhancements happen easily.

The choice of VR glasses was based on the available options, which were HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. Vive was available in a more convenient way, so it was mainly used, but as Unreal Engine allowed scalable multiplatform use, the game was also run with Oculus. By itself development happened without HMD at all, and then tested in the VR-room in the university setting.

Would you like to know how VR glasses and gaming can help to improve cities?

Come and try our Urban game !

05.12 TUT Library

Creating proper user interface was one of the biggest challenges of the project. As the game mechanics initially are only to collect players’ feedback and track his/her behavior, interface by itself, as a tool for interaction with virtual model of the city must have been intuitive, meaningful and at the same time fun. As possible metaphors for the “weapon” were suggested such pairs as “likes”/”dislikes”, “rainbows”/”fire”. For the entertaining purpose we’ve chosen toy-like weapons representing unicorn emitting rainbow, and dragon breathing with fire.

GAME DESIGN 1. MAIN IDEA 2. DESIGN 3. PHYSICS 4. STRUCTURE 5. GAME CHARACTER

INVITE PLAYERS COLLECT DATA

Also we have made a bullet counter limited to 2 bullets per each weapon in each spot. There were in total 6 videos representing 6 spots along Hameenkatu. With this set up we were able to collect 24 pictures from each player. Having around 30 players in total we collected around 720 pictures of Hameenkatu, labeled as “good” or “evil”.

Creating proper user interface was one of the biggest challenges of the project. As the game mechanics initially are only to collect players’ feedback and track his/her behavior, interface by itself, as a tool for interaction with virtual model of the city must have been intuitive, meaningful and at the same time fun. As possible metaphors for the “weapon” were suggested such pairs as “likes”/”dislikes”, “rainbows”/”fire”. For the entertaining purpose we’ve chosen toy-like weapons representing unicorn emitting rainbow, and dragon breathing with fire. Also we have made a bullet counter limited to 2 bullets per each weapon in each spot. There were in total 6 videos representing 6 spots along Hameenkatu. With this set up we were able to collect 24 pictures from each player. Having around 30 players in total we collected around 720 pictures of Hameenkatu, labeled as “good” or “evil”.

Analytical output consists of two parts - qualitative and quantitative. Conscious labeling of urban elements as of positive (pleasing) and negative (distracting) is of a major importance for data collection. All the targets shoot were instantly saved as a cropped pictures, aligned to the center of frame.

Simultaneously, for the purpose of quantitative analysis to track unconscious behavior of player we incorporated logging system, which registered coordinates of the virtual camera for every second of the game and saved that data in separate file for each player.

FUTURE DEVELOPMENT As the prototype our game was aimed to help people evaluate urban environments in virtual reality, separated from a real place. It is a convenient way to have an analytic output and initiate negotiation on the topics of current urban development, not depending on a weather or any unpredictable circumstances. The concept in its development provides many ideas for more advanced usage of the digital game. It could be used not only for evaluation, but for the design, presentation of design, advertisement and many more. Though the main potential of the game could be revealed through the technology of augmented reality, where people would interact with virtual space in real time, being in physical space linked to it. That way users would have a full freedom to change the location and point of view at any moment, making the system wholly ubiquitous.

FIRST OUTCOMES

NEGATIVE SHOTS

POSITIVE SHOTS

... SURVEY Was it your first experience with VR glasses?

YES

NO

Would you be more engaged into urban planning if it was based on interactive game?

If you knew that the data collected trough the game may influence future designs in your city, would you change the way YES you played the it?

ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORK

DATABASE

CITY SCAPE

+ HAMEENKATU SAGA

INPUT

SIGNAL PROCESSING METHOD CLASSIFY OBJECTS

OUTPUT

FINAL OUTCOMES 2

HEAT MAPS

TRAINED NETWORK

LIKED OBJECTS

LIKE CHART

32.4 14.9

SIGNBOARD

12.3

The Heat maps are created using the information of all users in online manner (Moving average model).

Red color shows the high probability of regions where people mostly looking at, on the contrary blue shows lowest probabilty regions.

10.96 9.7 7.2 4.27 3.44 1.85 0.8 0.45 0.28 0.11 STOP

Heat Map showing people looking at opening between building.

0.05

DISLIKE CHART DISLIKED

OBJECTS 28.7 14.4

Motion tracker: we are tracking the motions of player’s head and mapping them onto paronamic maps. Exact location and rotation of players head where people look at each frame are obtained from the game engine before equirectangular projec- tion.

13.7

SIGNBOARD

11.3 9.5 6.3 5.1

Heat Map showing people looking at advertisement boards.

3.9 2.7 2.1

Creating heatmap on a particular scene showing where people mostly look at. In this example, this probability map showing the estimated probabilty of region taking most attention of users.

0.73

1

0.05 STOP

12/12

THE IDEAL GAME Gamification and technology are evolving hand in hand. Perfect game involves all the citizen to play and it is deeply integrated to our society. When information is collected through everyday life, more points of views can be taken into account when making decisions. Perfect game is a platform of social and economical development. Information collected is only a secondary product. Perfect game gives citizens an opportunity to use their beloved cities as a platform to their creativity. Some ideas stay in virtual environment and some will be a part of the physical environment.

USER INTERFACE Mobile Platforms are already bringing augmented reality to real physical environment and in future it integrates to our everyday life so that it becomes as normal as the world we see today. Virtual reality gives you the option to stay in one real space being present in many virtual spaces simultaneously.

When you are playing the perfect game you don’t necessarily even realise that you are even playing a game. Created content can be shared and voted trough apps connected to the platform and feedback systems can be developed for each question. It can be anything from giving thumb up to more creative ways of giving feedback. For example voice recognition could be used for easily making data easy to read and to store. Every comment and feedback can be restored back to the actual environment it was made.

For professionals game will provide function that gives for example architects to combine data from user based layers to city databases. Collected information is stored to directly connected databases.

APPROVAL OF COMMUNITY

CREATION

FUTURE

OFFICIAL APPROVAL FUNDING

INSPIRATION

PHYSICAL CREATION

Block developement Proposals for comment

PHYSICAL AND VIRTUAL CITY What is the difference between physical and virtual city? Today physical city and virtual city are two different things.

We have some rare solutions where those two words meet but usually virtual city is only a visual copy of certain place on a certain moment. This low quality copy acts as a base for todays solutions. There is no real interaction. In future we can add more senses like smelling, hearing and touching to our virtual words and bring them closer to the real thing but now we have to think that virtual reality is just a add-on layer on top of our physical environment although new technologies will make the virtual copy more accurate and responsive. Thousands of scanners trying to find differences between databases and the city and keeping it up to date almost in real time. Responsiveness is the thing that is making virtual city more useful for future applications.

Crowdfundig for community driven developement project

Bicycle lane proposal Facade restoration inquiry

Art proposal

LAYERS IDEA Parking information: 200 places empty

Sport club advertisement Advertisement

Block developement Proposals for comment

Summer festival Feedback

Facade restoration inquiry

Childrens game to develope city

Feedback

Bridge restoration info

Parking information: 200 places empty

Sport club advertisement

Block developement Proposals forSummer comment festival

USE OF THE GAME Advertisement

Crowdfundig for community driven developement project Childrens game to develope city

Art proposal

Facade restoration inquiry

Art proposal

Sport club advertisement

Block developement festival Proposals forSummer comment Feedback

Bridge restoration info

Art proposal

Advertisement Crowdfundig for community driven developement project Childrens game to develope city

restoration info Sport club advertisement

Bicycle lane proposal

Art proposal

Facade restoration Bridge inquiry Art proposal

In future virtual city is divided in to thousands of layers that are build on top of our physical city. Layers are like tv-channels. When you are walking around the city you can surf through the layers and search the database to find new interesting channels. There is no limit for the number of channels. Individual users can have their own world, city will have their official building permit layer, there are layers for advertisements and park department of the city can have their data layer witch labels all the flowers and attaches the database to its physical counterpart. Layers are the way to link databases to physical environment.

We will notice that active discussion starts in virtual city and when ideas and solutions are build on top of real physical environment it will become really powerful tool. Physical city evokes citizen to develop their city and it Crowdfundig for community driven developement project affects to the development of the city and some ideas become real. lane Some layers can beBicycle hidden from public and serve their purpose as a link from database to physical city. For example proposal gardening Artdepartment will have their plant information and care taking instructions bound directly in to the plants and proposal building permit information can be seen directly on building walls.

Parking information: 200 places empty

Cities are using perfect game to improve physical environment and to stay on track what is happening in city. Active communities are developing their visions of the future of the city and citizens can create their ideas but the role of Bicycle lane proposal City Council as a authority stays when it comes to the physical city. City needs to be a big player in the game and actively use this platform to make virtual workshops and queries for citizen. New urban plan proposals are visible in real scale and even smaller details can be commented. It also helps designers to see their designs in real Parking information: environment.

200 places empty