CFP-Serious Games

Special Issue of IEEE CG&A, March/April 2009
Submissions due: 30 July 2008
Author notification: 31 October 2008
Final versions due: 28 November 2008

Videogames for entertainment have been pushing the boundaries of graphics research and capabilities for the past two decades. More recently, these technologies have been extended to include interaction with and modification of data-driven, complex 3D models, performed in real time on graphics processing units. As this industry has matured, other applications of videogame technologies have become apparent for the purposes of scientific simulation and visualization, industrial and military training, medical and health training and education, and geographic information systems, as well as public awareness and policy change. The models used in these serious game applications may contain millions of 3D primitives, from point sets to voxels, to complex higher-dimensional data sets. The use of serious games for education, decision-making, health, and training applications makes the realistic, real-time representation of models and data through geometry, appearance, illumination, visibility, and behavior critically important.

Another significant set of problems concerns the representation and animation of avatars and other life-like characters in a game and the interaction of the player with his or her own avatars as well as the avatars of other players. For training scenarios, a significant challenge is the provision of artificially intelligent characters for players to interact with. For persuasive applications, the realism of the characters' social behavior bears additional importance. Characters must react to the players in a way that supports the application goals and is immediately and realistically responsive.

Serious games require the real-time acquisition, processing, and visualization of changing data sets at high bandwidth and low latency, often with multiple simultaneous users. Rendering rates and interaction in these games are ideally at or above 30-60 frames per second. Advances that accelerate the management and interaction of large data sets, including techniques based on sample-based representation and rendering, polygon rasterization and shader hardware, and ray tracing are important for serious games, but the examination of the effects of these techniques on fidelity for decision making and training is particularly salient.

Toward maximizing real-world training effects, as well as making game play a more ubiquitous aspect of everyday life, serious games increasingly aim at bridging players' real world behavior and virtual world performance. The emergence of sophisticated low-cost sensor technologies to monitor activities, biometrics, geospatial location, proximity, and contextual influences promises to greatly enhance players' direct and indirect interaction with games and therefore has great potential to improve their effectiveness. However, the richness of these new modalities will also require a rethinking of the general interaction paradigms commonly associated with videogames in order to draw maximum benefit from multimodal input capabilities.

This special issue seeks articles examining some of the latest advances with respect to data representation, algorithms and data structures, systems issues, and applications for serious games that include real-time interaction with complex models. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to

• multiplayer systems architectures,
• player-to-player coordination,
• automated and semiautomated modeling techniques,
• compression and playback of simulation data,
• scripting and control of animated characters,
• training scenario planning and execution,
• human figure animation for training,
• intelligent characters,
• individual, group, and crowd behavior modeling and simulation,
• lighting, and relighting sampled models,
• representation and storage of large data sets,
• scalable parallel algorithms and architectures,
• rendering of complex and hybrid data sets,
• sampling and filtering for complex models,
• image- or sample-based representations,
• simplification and compression,
• visibility computations,
• data-driven procedural modeling,
• hardware for processing large data sets,
• data and resource management,
• configuration management and change control,
• delivery considerations (networking and system configuration),
• novel interaction techniques for massive data sets,
• sensor-based input and interaction technologies and techniques, and
• systems and applications.

Articles should be no more than 10 magazine pages, where a page is 800 words and a quarter-page image counts as 200 words. Cite only the 12 most critical references, and consider providing technical background in sidebars for nonexpert readers. Color images can be interspersed throughout the article and should be limited to a total of 10. Visit IEEE CG&A style and length guidelines at http://www.computer.org/cga/author.htm.

Please submit your article using our online manuscript submission service at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/cs-ieee. When uploading your article, please select the appropriate special issue title under the category "Manuscript Type." Also include complete contact information for all authors and coauthors in the submission. If you have any questions about submitting your article, please contact Alkenia Winston.

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