ALL ARE INVITED!

Mack Dedmon, Danielle Perszyk, Trisha Wilquet	Personal Virtual Assistants	Thursday, Nov 19, 10:00am in GMS 1097
Personal Virtual Assistants like Siri and Google Now are becoming more and more useful as the programming behind them has become more complex. Google Now can predict what you’re going to ask before you actually ask it, and Siri’s speech recognition is getting better and better with every update. How do these virtual assistants learn about you, where do they get there information from, and how do they understand your human voice? All of these questions will be addressed in our presentation.

Robert Bengtson, Anastasia Montavon, Neema Shekar

Virtual Reality

Thursday, Nov 19, 10:20am in GMS 1097

For a long time, many have believed that virtual reality will only remain science fiction. But recent advances in technology have brought it to life. Different virtual reality headsets are getting ready to hit the market, and the technology is already being used in other industries. How does virtual reality work? What are some of its limitations? What is its future potential? The answer to these questions will be explored in our presentation.

Josh Joncas, Gaven Kijkul, Tom Wolf

Reality in Video Games

Thursday, Nov 19, 10:45am in GMS 1097

An introductory overview of rendering and two major rendering techniques will be given during this presentation. Rendering is what ultimately gives life to the program. It shows what all the algorithms and functions ultimately do. Another very important aspect to bringing reality into a video game is through collision detection. There is a few ways this can be done, two specific ways is through graphical and math based collision detection. Finally, we must add basic physical laws and dynamics to our videogame to truly give a lifelike experience. The main physical laws and dynamics that we will primarily cover include Newtonian’s three laws of motion and gravity.

Logan Balow, Sam Joski, Brianna Lindow	Audio Files and Memory	Thursday, Nov 19, 11:05am in GMS 1097

This project looks at different formats of audio files, in particular the differences in how they are stored and read. We also explore compression and sampling rates, how they affect both the digital files, and the sound quality itself. The big questions we want to answer is: “How are numbers in a computer translated to sound, and vice versa?” In addition, the most popular forms of audio files will be discussed and explained. Overall, this project researches the process of creating, retrieving, storing, compressing, converting, and understanding sound.

Chance Browning, Carl Petersson, Kat Weber	Wireless Connection and Motion Sensing	Thursday, Nov 19, 11:30am in GMS 1097

Wireless connection is something that is taken for granted in the gaming world. Through our research, we discovered how various wireless controllers work, and the different technologies behind them. We focused on the Xbox wireless controller, the Wii remote and the Xbox Kinect. All three controllers give the user the best experience possible, without the user even wondering how these things are being done.

Kurt Ahonen, Zach Berres, Victor Garcia	Augmented Reality	Friday, Nov 20, 11:30am in GMS 1096
Augmented reality (AR) is one of the most important and likely, influential subjects of the 21st century. AR takes actual reality, in real time, and merges it with virtual reality to create a completely interactive environment. This environment is functional and practical in our daily lives. We will demonstrate the differences between AR and virtual reality (VR), current developments of AR, and the future of AR.

Shelby Kirn, Hanna Raczek, Maria Satnik	The Modern NPC	Friday, Nov 20, 11:50am in GMS 1096
NPC (non-player character) programming is a large interconnected process composed of several small, self-contained processes, some of the most important of which are how they move, why they move, and what they say. All of these are built from sets of conditions, pulled from the environment and the player, that then determine movement and dialogue. In our presentation, we will discuss the basics of decision determination and explore the ways in which this logic structures NPC dialogue and physical movement.

Sean Grant, Aaron Hammond, Jim Rogers	Digital Cameras	Friday, Nov 20, 12:10pm in GMS 1096
In an age where we can take a photo and share it with the rest of the world in one instant, we may take for granted just how intricate the process of capturing that moment is. In our presentation, we plan on explaining the process of how today’s digital cameras process an image that can be interpreted by a computer, as well as focusing on the new innovations in the camera world that are continuously improving our capabilities of capturing a moment in time.