Storytelling in Virtual Environments - edutainment in Digital Heritage Exchange (DHX) scenarios Martin Goebel Fraunhofer Institute for Media Communication (IMK), Germany Ernst Kruijff Fraunhofer Institute for Media Communication (IMK), Germany Sina Mostafawy RMH New Media GmbH, Germany Storytelling in Virtual Environments - edutainment in Digital Heritage Exchange (DHX) scenarios 9.00 Welcome and introduction to the workshop 9.15 Invited speaker: Mr. Mark Mine, Walt Disney Imagineering, An Industry Perspective on Virtual Storytelling 10.15 Paper Presentations (15 minutes per paper, 5 minutes discussion) - ChangHoon Park, HeeDong Ko, Hee-Kap Ahn, Jinwook Kim, NAVER : design and implementation of XML-based VR Framework on a PC cluster. - Mads Peter Herluf, Steffen Knak-Nielsen, Peter Darling, World Heritage Explorer. - Hang-Bong Kang, Yong-Moo Kwon, The Needs And Possibilities of Non-photorealistic Rendering for Virtual Heritage. - Eiman Kanjo, Peter Astheimer. Coulored Farm: Interactive Toys Environments for Storytelling and Games Applications. - Ruth Aylett, Narrative in Virtual Heritage. 12.00-13.30 Lunch 13.30 OpenDHX introduction Introduction to DHX project: goals, consortium, mission statement OpenDHX. 14.00 Preliminary storyboard presentations 14.30 Technical framework Introduction to the technical framework of DHX: - System layout setup (preliminary - showing primary components, including installations like VR theatre and I-Conetm, networks, etc.), discussion standardisation issues. - New authoring techniques for data capturing and generation (including an introduction to computer vision methods) 15.15 OpenDHX discussion Possible presentations interested people for joining OpenDHX, discussion. Virtual worlds have become technically perfect more and more. Software and hardware are developed to that one can see virtual scenarios with high visual complexity. Henceforth, also acoustical, haptic and olfactory senses are involved in modern virtual installations. The new challenge in virtual environments is to develop advanced narrative mechanisms. The experience is the very new way of storytelling. As we see the high speed of development in the game industry, the need for new forms of storytelling is apparent. Virtual Reality is also more and more present as a marketing and commercial instrument. The fascination of 3D-immersive installations is still unbroken. The goal is to improve the content to emerge into the next level of narrative virtual environments. Virtual Storytelling will be one of the important progresses in virtual reality. Professional dramaturges and directors have to be able to work on stories in VR. We have to develop interfaces and tools for them that enable them to work on virtual sceneries. These tools should include the narrative as well as the technical and creative issues, for example camera tracking, lightmoods, and so on. In the workshop, we will not only consider Virtual Storytelling as a narrative potential for virtual environments, but also take a deeper look at edutainment issues for digital heritage exchange environments. Digital Heritage Exchange scenarios are a staggering opportunity to implement new virtual storytelling concepts to create vivid environments for sharing cultural and ecological content, worldwide, in an attractive way. The workshop aims at bringing together researchers from the area of VR/AR technology, human computer interaction, AI, as well as psychologists, SF authors, and other people with a vision of what storytelling in immersive virtual reality environments should look. The goal of this workshop is to showcase, develop, and discuss concepts for better virtual storytelling methods, tools and collaborative work between computer scientists and creative artists. Additionally, it will involve ideas towards the realization of interfaces enabling narrative and creative virtual sceneries. The workshop consists of several sessions. The main session is the paper presentation session followed by an open discussion. After the paper session, time will be reserved to present the DHX project, a worldwide initiative supported by the European Union, which deals with the exchange of cultural and ecological heritage exchange via transcontinental guided shared environments.