CONTENT
Project Archive
| Click column title to sort |
| Project | Sponsor | Year | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| Action in Motion Action in Motion is striving to
bring traditional "hack-and-slash"
gameplay to the Microsoft Kinect.
Hack-and-slash games typically
portray a hero character that can
perform larger-than-life actions
and attacks to thwart multiple
enemies at once, such as thunderous
punches and 20-foot high jumps.
Since most of these types of feats
are not physically possible, the
team will use animation blending
techniques in conjunction with
Kinect input to make the player
feel like they're actually
performing these great moves and
not just triggering animations.
The team has set out to create six
prototypes of common actions found
in hack-and-slash games (combat,
movement, etc.) as well as one
polished, playable demo that
combines the best prototypes into
one smooth experience.
This is a student-pitched
project that has been in concept
development since last spring. | ETC | 2011, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| antEAter Project antEAter is an Electronic
Arts ETC collaboration on the
Silicon Valley campus in Redwood
City, California. The seven student
team was given the very exciting
task of creating a new product and
intellectual property that will
serve as a tech demo for a new
gaming platform. Once the tech demo
was delivered on November 1st, the
team began building a playable game
prototype for future EA
implementation. In addition to this
prototype, antEAter will be
providing design documentation, a
number of polished animation cycles
and a fully illustrated game
storyboard using our comic book art
style. Team antEAter is also very
excited to have the opportunity to
work closely with several extremely
talented EA professionals including
Terry Smith and Michael John. | Electronic Arts | 2011, Fall | Silicon Valley |
| Crescendo Crescendo Crescendo is a client based project
working with Smilegate, a Korean
game developer. Smilegate would
like us to create an experience for
children and families that
encourages cooperation, brings
people together, and gives players
the feeling of playing real
instruments without requiring them
to have the skills of a musician.
With these ideas in mind, Crescendo
will create a rhythm/music game for
the PC. The game will require
players to match rhythms in time
with music and will reward players
for playing in harmony with one
another. This game will be played
with custom instruments that will
look like their real counterparts
while greatly simplifying their
use. The goal is to deliver to
Smilegate a concrete, finished
product and documentation of the
research we've done explaining how
we came to our design decisions.
| Smilegate | 2011, Fall | Silicon Valley |
| Five Sided Square Team 5SS (Five Sided Square) is an
ETC Student Pitch Project for fall
of 2011. The
team is currently located at ETC
Silicon Valley Campus, Redwood
City, California.
Our project goal is to create a
table top multi-player game by
using one of the
recently introduced platform,
Sifteo Cubes.
As a team, we feel that our final
deliverable should be one fully
functional
complete game on the Sifteo cubes.
We will also include all
documentation such as
design documents, research results,
and any other write ups we may
create through
out our production process. | Sifteo | 2011, Fall | Silicon Valley |
| General Motors Serious Games GM Serious Games We are team sigma. We are currently working for General Motor R&D Manufacture division. The vision of this project is to create an innovative experience that helps operators contribute new ideas to the assembly process. The objective is not only to simulate a prototype of
the perfect factory, but to use the feedback from GM employees to
influence actual changes in the assembly process. Our challenge in
this project is making a strategy game that will help GM employees
contribute to the management and design of a production line in a fun an engaging way. | General Motors | 2011, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Illuminate The Illuminate project is the first step towards inspiring young minds to pursue science and engineering as a career. Initiated by DARPA, this is a multi-year project working in conjunction with many different institutions and organizations, such as the Sesame Workshop and Carnegie Mellon’s Human Computer Interaction Institute.
The end-product will be a multi-platform game for 1st-3rd graders that inspires interest and teaches basic concepts in the field of science. This semester, we are focusing on developing game prototypes that will utilize these concepts in a fun way and lay the foundation for further development. | DARPA | 2011, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| LinguaLoco LinguaLoco is a language learning game project under the supervision of our client, the McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. We are creating a game that actively assesses a player's comprehension of a given language (for our project, Spanish) and provides immediate feedback appropriate to that assessment. We aim to create an immersive experience that puts a player in situations to learn language effectively. | McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. | 2011, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Madeira Theme Park WeTheme is working with the Parque
Temático da Madeira (Madeira Theme
Park) on the island of Madeira in
Portugal. The park covers seven
acres of land with a multitude of
attractions relating to the
history, traditions and the culture
of Madeira. The attraction we will
be working on is a CAVE, a virtual
environment utilizing four
projectors to display images on a
room sized cube. Our goal this
semester is to create two technical
demonstrations: one being
static animation/film the second an
interactive experience. | Madeira Theme Park | 2011, Fall | Portugal |
| Makeshop Project The MakeShop is a hands-on learning environment at the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh where children get the chance to design and develop their own projects by integrating old and new technologies. MakeShop mediums range from woodworking and soft circuitry to animation and electronics; a team of facilitators and visiting artists make the space a laboratory for exploration, creativity and curiosity.
The MakeShop Project at the Entertainment Technology Center is interested in promoting self reflection once children finish their projects at the MakeShop. Over the course of a semester, the team will design and prototype an area where families can reflect on what has been created, giving both a chance to see it from each others' point of view. Through a series of prompts, the children will record their methods and favorite aspects of their project development in their own words. They will then be able to showcase their project on a touchscreen at the front of the MakeShop exhibit to display their success and encourage them to keep creating!
| Pittsburgh Children's Museum | 2011, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Oceanus 3 Team Oceanus 3 is continuing the Entertainment Technology Center’s development of two interactive crowd experiences for the 2012 World Expo in Yeosu Korea. Our team is based at the ETC’s Osaka Japan campus and our advisor is Dr.Salvador Barrera. We will be creating these experiences for our client GL Associates.
All guests entering the 2012 expo will pass through the Expo Digital Gallery, walking under a massive LED ceiling display showing our content. Hundreds of guests at a time will be able to interact with the ETC’s Safe Spot and Sumi Twitter experiences. Safe Spot is an augmented reality experience that uses a network camera to virtually transport people onto the melting sea ice of the arctic and Sumi Twitter is an animated visualization of a Twitter feed that breathes life into tweets with the help of colorful ocean life.
The theme of the 2012 expo is “The Living Ocean and Coast.” Exhibitions at the expo will focus on ocean ecosystems and the relationship between humanity and the sea. The interactives that we design will express these themes while creating a fun and immersive experience for all who attend the expo.
Visit us at the 2012 World Exposition in Yeosu!
| World Expo | 2011, Fall | Osaka |
| Project Augur Project Augur is a client project for Lockheed Martin experimenting with predicting human opponents using artificial intelligence. The project aims to find interesting, novel approaches to and applications for this technology. | Lockheed Martin | 2011, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| seAker seAker is an iPad game currently in development at Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center. seAker will be in the App Store Winter 2011.
Best described as a classic arcade-style game, seAker revolves around a strong core gameplay mechanic and seeks to build upon that foundation by offering a variety of supporting actions the player can take as the levels progress. Crucial to this endeavor is utilizing the touch and tilt functionality of the iPad to design innovative gameplay and fun, accessible controls.
seAker began as a one week project in CMU’s Fall 2010 Building Virtual Worlds class. Originally a competitive four-player experience on the Jam-O-Drum platform, the challenge for this semester is to expand upon the original concept – refocusing the game as a compelling single-player experience, while taking advantage of the unique features offered by the iPad. | ETC | 2011, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Sturm und Drang Productions Sturm and Drang Productions This is a student-pitched short
film project that will use and
explore the ETC's brand new Organic
Motion system for an entirely
computer-generated (CG) character.
The film is based on the 1920
German Expressionist silent
classic, The Cabinet of Dr.
Caligari, and will be a composite
of CG and live-action elements. | ETC | 2011, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Team DynacTiV Team Dynac TIV Team DynacTiV is an ETC project in
collaboration with Microsoft
Corporation, which aims to explore
new more interactive experiences
for viewers of traditional linear
media (TV). Interactive television
has been experimented with for
decades, tracing back as early as
1953 Methods for making this
traditionally passive experience
more interactive have been
incredibly diverse, including
viewer controlled plots, extra
information to augment the
broadcast, allowing control of
camera angles and much more.
Despite limitations such as high
production costs, genre
exclusivity, and highly variable
success ratings, experiments with
interactive television continue to
persist in modern media. Now, with
Microsoft’s Kinect, a unique input
device exclusive to the Xbox 360
video game console, there are
opportunities to take interactive
television to where it has never
gone before. Advanced body position
and motion tracking, facial and
voice recognition, and intuitive
gesture recognition are just a few
of the features Team DynacTiV hopes
to utilize in revolutionizing
interactive television. | Microsoft | 2011, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| VRoom 360 Vroom 360° is a project team at
Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment
Technology Center that is designing
and implementing a new interactive
survey regarding vehicle roominess
and visibility for General Motors.
We are working with our client
representative, Stacey Gu from GM
Research and Development, to think
of new out-of-the-box ways to
gather information about U.S.
drivers while also making a survey
a fun and engaging experience. The
results from our survey will be
used by GM’s Engineering department
to take into account how consumers
feel when they sit and drive new
vehicles and how to improve the
user experience while producing the
world’s best automobiles. | General Motors | 2011, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| ¿Plastico? ¡Fantastico! ¿Plastico? ¡Fantastico! is working with the Hewlett-Packard Company in Barcelona, Spain. HP, a world leader in printing technologies, has recently entered into the up-and- coming field of 3D printing and is interested in adding value to the 3D assets created by their printers by exploring new methods of creation and interaction.
3D printing is used in a professional capacity by engineers, artists and designers to rapidly prototype their ideas, with applications as varied as architectural mockups to parts of Iron Man´s armor. Currently, 3D printing technology is relatively inaccessible to those unfamiliar with computer aided modeling software. The team is working to develop a novel and entertaining way to interact with 3D printers that can be used by current customers as well as attract new audiences. | HP-3D Printing | 2011, Fall | Barcelona, Spain |
| !ON Oracle Sunspot Team !ON (Interactive Object
Networking) is working in
collaboration with Oracle, a
hardware and software developer,
with the goal of using their
SunSPOTs technology to create
exciting new forms of social
interaction. Small, able to
wirelessly network with each other,
and easy to customize and program,
the SunSPOTs technology offers a
powerful and rare platform for
gaming that Team !ON will stress to
its fullest extent.
Through rapid prototyping and
experimental gameplay, Team !ON
will utilize this technology
to create innovative and
sensational games and experiences
that will encourage people to
engage with the SunSPOTs, and with
each other, in a way never before
realized. | Oracle | 2011, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| "7" WMS Gaming Bet on the extraordinary! WMS Gaming is a world leader in innovative, high-tech casino games that offer an unparalleled level of entertainment for the gambling dollar. For 2011, WMS has once again partnered with the ETC to explore technologies that can redefine the casino experience, and "7" students have been chosen to lead the way. Game design for the casino industry falls under a strict set of unique parameters that will challenge "7" at every step, resulting in a final deliverable that's part video game, part location-based attraction. Their goal is to exceed expectations set by previous WMS projects, with a proof-of-concept that's both outrageously fun and disarmingly engaging. | WMS Gaming | 2011, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| A-Wall Microsoft Team A-Wall is very happy and excited to be part of the ETC's third Microsoft-sponsored project, and the very first to be on-site in Redmond, Washington. In close collaboration with Justin Harrison, Florin Gale, and CMU alum Arnold Blinn, A-Wall will explore the possibilities of the large format video wall found in Microsoft’s new retail stores .
Through the introduction of dynamic, and potentially interactive, Xbox Live avatars, the team aims to make the wall a more meaningful portion of a guest’s experience while in Microsoft retail store.
The novel technology of the Microsoft wall, which wraps around the entire store, poses a technical challenge in implementing interactivity between customer and avatar, as well as an artistic one in creating an overall theme and look that will draw customers into the world of avatars. | Microsoft | 2011, Spring | Redmond |
| Blue Dot Booyah Team Blue Dot is working with Booyah, a social web and mobile
entertainment company that incorporates the real world and people’s lives into the gaming experience. By utilizing the widespread use of mobile devices, Blue Dot seeks to focus on exploring new methods in which
people can interact with each other in deeply collaborative ways.
Using iPhones, players will need to work together to fulfill tasks. The times and locations of each player's status updates will influence the game experience for other players. The blue dot that indicates your position on the map will no longer be only the player’s position in the real world, but the state of player’s game in the digital one. | Booyah | 2011, Spring | Silicon Valley |
| Cosmic Contact Bridge One of the goals of the Cosmic Contact
project is to create a series of immersive
movies that take the ETC Bridge on an
intergalactic trip through the deepest regions
of outer space.
Using all six of the bridge’s screens, we hope
to utilize exciting visual effects and computer
generated imagery; while also incorporating
light and sound into the experience.
The other aspect of this project includes
creating a unique software solution for the
bridge platform. We strive to enable multi
touch interfacing and create a suite of
customized tools specifically for this original
technology. Our team will be using Panda,
an open-source 3D game engine, to
implement these features into the existing
bridge.
We want this project to be a captivating
experience for everyone who visits the 5th
floor of the Entertainment Technology
Center, and the end result of this project will
also allow future students to develop content
for the ETC Bridge. | ETC | 2011, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| CSI: Crime Scene Innovation Team CSI: Crime Scene Innovation Crime Scene Innovation is an ETC project sponsored by Dr. Henry Lee, one of the world’s foremost forensic scientists, to build a set of educational mini-games for the University of New Haven’s new forensic science center in New Haven, Connecticut. These games will join existing displays in educating visitors on modern methods of solving crimes with science and reasoning.
Using a touchscreen interface, Crime Scene Innovation’s games will provide guests with increasing levels of complexity, featuring pattern matching, decision making, and logic-based gameplay. These games will allow players to examine evidence and crime scenes based on actual cases, using actual techniques that forensic scientists employ to gather critical information in criminal cases: ballistic fingerprinting, blood spatter analysis, pathology, and evidence collection. | University of New Haven | 2011, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Double Click! Click II Experts believe that the underrepresentation of women in STEM-related careers is a problem which begins between the ages of ten to fourteen.The goal of Double Click! is to continue developing a game-centric website for 11-13 year-old girls that embraces STEM content (STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and hopefully generates more interest in these fields. The Double Click! team was assigned this mission by the Girls Math and Science Partnership at The Carnegie Science Center, who originally created the Click! Summer Program for tween girls to promote interest in STEM topics. This mission is funded by a MacArthur Foundation 2010 Digital Media and Learning grant. Note, this is a second semester project. | Carnegie Science Center | 2011, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Empyrean 2D SV-EA Empyrean 2D is a client based project working with EA2D, a division of Electronic Arts. EA2D’s goal is to create connected and social games for gamers. This means creating games for non-traditional platforms such as Facebook and mobile applications that work together.
Using this philosophy, Empyrean 2D aims to create an iPad game that, in the future would be extensible to other tablets. This game would integrate closely with EA2D’s upcoming title Dragon Age Legends and would create a connected experience between both games that enhance the player’s experience across both platforms. The goal is to deliver a fully functional and connected game that is ready for release to the general public.
| Electronic Arts | 2011, Spring | Silicon Valley |
| Ethereal II Now in its second semester, Ethereal is a student-pitched project that focuses on delivering a game founded in the realistic cooperative strategy of medieval fighting & formation techniques.
In our second semester the project is housed at the IGN.com headquarters as a winner of the Indie Open House competition. The medieval fighting experience will evolve with new features and integrating IGN's GameSpy technology. The core experience will remain as players realize that working together means survival on the battlefield. | ETC | 2011, Spring | Silicon Valley |
| Heavy Metal 2 Catepillar Our team is developing a terrain
visualization and deformation
prototype for construction
equipment manufacturer Caterpillar.
Caterpillar is currently developing
remote and autonomous control
systems to allow for the safe
operation of heavy equipment in
hazardous environments such as
power plants and mine sites. Our
project is a 3D visualization to
assist remote operators and
increase their situational
awareness through realistic models
of their equipment and the terrain.
To accomplish this task, our team
will develop a terrain simulation
system that will utilize data
streams coming from the remote
equipment to update the surface
information. This simulation will
resemble the real terrain where the
machinery operates with high level
of detail. We will also add extra
visualization data obtained by the
built-in sensors, so the operators
can accomplish their usual tasks in
the safest way with technology as a
helper instead of an obstacle. | Catepillar | 2011, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Pandamonium PANDA Pandamonium is a Panda3D project at
the Entertainment Technology Center
of Carnegie Mellon University,
working on features for the Panda3D
level editor.
As a featured tool for the students
of the National High School Game
Academy (NHSGA), where high school
students experience the world of
video game development first hand,
Pandamonium is tasked to take the
existing level editor and evolve it
into an intuitive story-telling
toolset. Including features such as
a quest-based system and a
conversation tree, this introduces
a whole new level of creativity in
story-based games, giving the
students more directive controls to
produce a rich and engaging
experience.
| ETC | 2011, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Project NEST Inspiring Path & expo project Project NEST (NEC Experimental
Social Transit) is an Entertainment
Technology Center project sponsored by NEC in Osaka, Japan. Project NEST aims to create an interactive experience of city life thirty years in the future.
In our futuristic city each citizen will have their own personal means of
transportation. These personal transit vehicles hover just above the surface of the group and can take you anywhere you wish to go. If you need a
ride or cannot drive, simply link
your vehicle with a friend and hitch a ride.
Project NEST combines the convenience of compact cars with the efficiency of a metro subway network.
This immersive first person
experience will explore the boundary between technology and social life and help people visualize what the future could be. | NEC | 2011, Spring | Osaka |
| Puppetineering SV-CJ CGV Imagine being able to speak with
and interview your favorite virtual
characters. How exciting would
that be? The Puppetineering
project at Carnegie Mellon
University’s Entertainment
Technology Center aims to allow you
to do just that. The goal of our
project is to give personal
interactions with virtual
characters. We are designing an
experience that completely breaks
the 4th wall and makes it so
virtual characters are able to
speak directly with their real-life
fans.
Puppetineering stands for puppet
plus engineering. We are creating
a tool that allows a person to
control and puppeteer a virtual
character, giving it a full range
of movements, voice, and emotion.
The end product is a prototype that
people will be able to interact
with and hopefully, with a little
magic, people will allow themselves
to be lost in the experience and
believe that they are actually
speaking and responding to a
virtual character. | ETC | 2011, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| SpeakEasy MINSPEAK The goal of the Speakeasy project
is to develop a fun, effective, and
compelling method to learn new
languages using the Minspeak
symbolic icon system.
Minspeak is a dedicated
hardware/software platform that
allows people to communicate by
representing words and concepts
with sequences of icons. This was
originally developed to help the
communication-disabled speak more
efficiently, and we are expanding
its scope to include language
learning on a tablet device. | Minspeak | 2011, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Starscape GKTW At Give Kids the World, each child is given the opportunity to personalize a small golden star that will be placed on the ceiling with tens of thousands of other stars, each one representing another child who visited. The Star Program has become an important part of the experience for the children and their familes - the child puts the star in an Enchanted Chest, the Star Fairy (a past ETC project) takes the star, and in the morning their star is up and they have become permanently connected to the facility. Behind the scenes, volunteers work each night to collect and catalogue the stars and then place them up on the ceiling. Having run out of room after years of stars, they are building the Star Tower, an addition to the Castle of Miracles, which allow them to continue the program for the next 20 years.
For this project, the Starscape team is developing an interactive experience that allows children and their families to find their star in the tower. Because of the height of the tower, it will be impossible to get close to individual stars, so the team is pairing motion controlled cameras to locate and zoom in on the stars with a touch tablet to create a meaningful story. The entire experience will incorporate live video feed, lighting and audio effects in the tower, as well as developing a unique interface using the tablet.
In addition to creating a meaningful story for the children and their families, the Starscape team is developing a system of cataloguing and documenting the location of each star, as well as an approachable interface for volunteers to work with when hanging the stars. | Give Kids The World | 2011, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Stoveghost Studio Collectible, the first release from
student pitch project Stoveghost
Animation Studio, follows Lenora, a
sweet elderly woman, who orders a
keepsake from a TV shopping network
and soon becomes hooked on a line
of cutesy porcelain miniatures that
rapidly clutter her house and life.
Stoveghost aims to simulate a
professional feature animation
studio environment culminating in a
polished CGI animated short with a
unique visual style and an engaging
original story. The team started
pre-production in summer of 2010,
focusing on story, visual
development, asset creation, and
scheduling. This semester,
Stoveghost will focus on animating,
texturing, lighting, rendering,
scoring, mixing, and editing the
final piece for submission to film
festivals. | ETC | 2011, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Team Energym BodyMedia The incidence of childhood obesity
has more
than tripled in the last 30 years
and now
hovers at 20% of elementary school
children.
Working closely with BodyMedia
representatives,
our team will utilize their
existing hardware
and software to create a game
targeted at
children ages 7-9, with a heavy
emphasison
fun gameplay and appealing
aesthetics.
Our ultimate goal is to help teach
school children
to stay active, eat healthy, and
ideally burn
more calories than they consume. | BodyMedia | 2011, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| The RISE Project Chicago Museum The RISE Project is a collaboration
between the Museum of Science and
Industry, Chicago (MSI) and
Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment
Technology Center (ETC). A team of
six graduate students at the ETC
will develop a prototype for the
Museum's Fast Forward ... Inventing
the Future exhibit, which offers
Museum goers a glimpse into the
future by featuring ideas and
prototypes from innovators whose
work has the potential to impact
our lives.
The ETC team will design and
prototype an interactive experience
focusing on one of the innovators
who will be added to the gallery in
October 2011. The team was given a
list of seven people from diverse
fields such as biochemistry, deep-
sea exploration, and surgical
robotics to research and brainstorm
concepts for development. The goal
is to develop a compelling
interface that gives guests the
opportunity to experience the
innovator's work in a fun and
unique way. At the end of the
spring term, they will have a
working prototype for a hands-on
experience ready to be handed off
to a fabricator for the final
installation at MSI.
RISE - Realizing Innovation through
Science and Education
| Chicago Museum | 2011, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Unity 3 Research Project UNITY Team Unity~ is a project sponsored
by the Entertainment Technology
Center at Carnegie Mellon
University with an emphasis on
research and prototyping for the
Unity Game Development Tool across
platforms both old and new. The
project is meant to discover the
ramifications of implementing the
Unity engine within the ETC. Over
the course of the semester, Team
Unity~ will investigate platforms
such as stereoscopic 3D, the Jam-O-
Drum, and Microsoft's Kinect. | ETC | 2011, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| ACG (Asymmetrical Co-operative Gaming) ACG Asymmetrical Co-operative Gaming is
creating Fusion, a game which
merges three different genres of
video games. We have chosen to
merge first-person-shooters,
racing, and puzzling gaming to show
that it can be done, although the
principles we are developing will
be applicable to nearly any genre
combination.
Fusion is a game in which any
player on a team can enter the
world as any of the three modes and
have significant interactions with
each other mode on their own team,
and within their opponent's team.
Teammates in different modes must
work together to counter their
opponents' strategy in order to
earn points faster. The goal is to
let each player play a game type
they are familiar with and love,
while allowing the teams to have
compelling, shared social
experiences. | ETC | 2010, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| ALL IN :: Microsoft Live Engagement Sponsored by Microsoft and in
development at Carnegie Mellon University’s
Entertainment Technology Center,
All In is a proof of
concept that creates an innovative Texas
Hold ‘Em gaming experience by utilizing
Windows Phone 7, PC, and Xbox LIVE
Avatars. At the core of this experience is a
shared screen (PC) and hidden screen
(Windows Phone 7) environment with the
ability to expand to multi-location gameplay.
So get your friends together no matter where
they are and go All In. | Microsoft | 2010, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Arca (EA/Maxis Project) Arca is a project at the Entertainment Technology Center, a graduate program of Carnegie Mellon University.
This project is the first collaborative project with EA/Maxis, the famous creators of Spore.
In this project, a small team of students will be utilizing Maxis' newly-developed platform that is used for authoring Maxis-style
simulation games.
As for the objective of this project, the students team will be creating their own themed simulation game using this unique,
data-driven toolset that Maxis has been building for several years, and exploring more possibilities along the way.
| Electronic Arts/Maxis | 2010, Fall | Silicon Valley |
| ARGo ARGo is an ETC project sponsored by
the MacArthur Foundation to create
a mobile, inclusive ARG (Alternate
Reality Game) to introduce teens to
the New Youth City Learning
Network. The experience will
provide 6th-12th graders with the
means to navigate and understand
the capabilities of New Youth
City's member institutions. To this
goal we are delivering a completed
playable experience based on these
educational resources, as well as
providing an easy-to-use toolkit
for customizing adventures. | ETC | 2010, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Click! Agency Click Online! The Mission:
Create a virtual spy school, a.k.a Click! Online. This will be the recruitment center for 11-13 year old female Click! Agents, specialists in the areas of S.T.E.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math). In this online virtual laboratory, Agents collaborate in a science-based social network to solve mysteries in biomedical science, environmental protection, and expressive technology. The Players: The Carnegie Science Center and their accomplice the Girls Math and Science Partnership originally created the Click! Summer Program in Pittsburgh, PA. Their next objective: use their MacArthur Foundation 2010 Digital Media and Learning grant to take over the world (via the internet). | Carnegie Science Center | 2010, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Coco & Co Unfortunately, games that feature text and speech for cross-player communication end up herding their players by the individual languages they speak. More often than not, success relies on strong communication, so players naturally group with people of their own spoken language. The same thing happens in the physical world...and it's sad. The Earth is small as it is. Why should English speakers only interact with English speakers, or Chinese speakers with other Chinese speakers? We need more cross cultural exchange! To fix this, Coco & Co is designing an online game that replaces text and speech with another form of communication...play! Play is something we universally understand as humans, so let's use it to get the world working together. Our game will focus on cross- cultural communication and collaboration through play, and will provide a shared space for players to discover each other, progress together, and learn about each new person they meet. | ETC | 2010, Fall | Silicon Valley |
| CRECHUR :: Bayer Didget CRECHUR Blood glucose testing is demanding,
difficult and painful for any
diabetic. But for children with
diabetes, the responsibility can
seem overwhelming.
Team Didget is working to instill
good preventative care habits in
diabetic children ages 8 to 12 by
tapping the motivating power of
play. The project leverages the
strong foundation of the Bayer
Didget device--a blood glucose
meter that rewards kids for
consistent testing with in-game
rewards both on the Nintendo DS and
the web.
Our aim is to strengthen the
motivational power of the web
portal. To accomplish this, we are
developing a prototype experience
that satisfies the following three
priorities: 1) Establish an active
peer community, 2) Create a
compelling economy where points
earned through testing can be
exchanged for meaningful rewards,
and 3) Drive positive health
outcomes.
| Bayer Didget | 2010, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Games for Healthy Kids One of three children in the United
Sates are overweight or obese. The
Games for Healthy Kids project's
goal is motivate children to be
conscious of nutrition and fitness.
We are working with the Grable
Foundation and the United States
Department of Agriculture to
develop game that uses nutritional
information in an educational way.
Our goal, in accordance with the
Let's Move! Campaign, is to help
end childhood obesity with in one
generation.
To obtain our goal, we are going to
engage children and help them
realize the choices they make about
nutrition and exercise impact their
lives greatly. Through play, we
hope entertain and teach children
the importance of eating right and
getting proper exercise.
| Grable Foundation | 2010, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Heavy Metal: Terrain Shaping Prototype Our team is developing a terrain visualization and deformation prototype for construction equipment manufacturer Caterpillar. Caterpillar is currently developing remote and autonomous control systems to allow for the safe operation of heavy equipment in hazardous environments such as power plants and mine sites. Our project is a proof of concept interface using techniques commonly found within the game industry to assist remote operators and increase their situational awareness through 3D visualization of their equipment and the terrain. To accomplish this task, our team will develop a terrain modeling and deformation system that will utilize data streams coming from the remote equipment to update the surface, and use predictive deformation to estimate material placement that their equipment is currently incapable of reporting. We will develop a GUI to allow a remote operator to gain a quick and intuitive understanding of the state of the remote equipment and its position within the terrain. Additionally we will prepare a cost benefit analysis of various game or real-time engines to evaluate their suitability for this application. | Caterpillar | 2010, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Immersive Vision Lockheed Martin 3D In recent years, 3D technologies have become
increasingly visible. James Cameron’s Avatar
highlights a long list of recent box office
successes using stereoscopic 3D. This
technology is also finding its way into the
consumer market with the advent of 3D
television, as well as 3D gaming on home
consoles.
Our team is doing extensive research in the
hope of finding the best 3D technology to
build and develop a successful project.
The goal of our project is to examine how
these technologies can be used to better
present information in a more efficient and
understandable way. Working with our client,
Lockheed Martin, we hope to develop a 3D
application which proves that 3D can be
useful, entertaining, exiting and practical. | Lockheed Martin | 2010, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Kissimmee Interactive O.S.K. GKTW 2010 Kissimmee Interactive O.S.K. is designing and building an automated reservation system for the Give Kids The World Village. Give Kids The World is a non-profit resort in Kissimmee, Florida for children with life-threatening illnesses and their families. Our system will assist in reserving events that occur within the Village, such as bedtime tuck-ins with resort mascots Mayor Clayton and Miss Merry, or Kids’ Night Out – an evening of activities and games for children. We will deliver the system in two parts: a management tool for employees and volunteers and a themed kiosk for resort guests.
The management tool, developed at the ETC over the summer, provides an easy-to-use web interface that allows employees and volunteers to create and edit events, as well as make reservations for families. The kiosk, currently being developed, will give parents the ability to make, view, and print reservations during their stay. Our kiosk will reside in the House of Hearts, the welcome center at the resort, and will also feature an interactive resort map as well as games for children. Our ultimate goal is to make the reservation process a fun experience that can be shared by the whole family. | Give Kids The World | 2010, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Oceanus (2012 Yeosu World Expo) Oceanus is a cross-campus project
at the
Entertainment Technology center
doing
research on and designing an
interactive
experience for use at the 2012
World Expo in
Yeosu, South Korea. With students
from both
the ETC Pittsburgh and ETC Osaka
campuses,
the team’s content will be on
display all day
in the event’s Expo Digital
Gallery, where up
to hundreds of users at a time will
interact
with the large LED ceiling display
as they
walk down a street towards the expo
itself.
This immersive media-art
environment will
explore the new field of large-
scale user
interaction with the theme of the
expo:
humans and the ocean working
together and
benefiting each other. | Yeosu World Expo | 2010, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Opsis2 Opsis2 is team working out of
Carnegie Mellon University's
Silicon Valley campus creating
stereoscopic games for a 3D laptop
developed by Super Perfect Ltd.
Recent advancements in digital
image generation and display have
brought 3D Entertainment back into
the mainstream. Although the
technology has come a long way
people still have their hang ups
about wearing glasses for any
casual entertainment.
Super Perfect Ltd is a Chinese
company who specialize in cutting
edge image display. The monitor
they have shared with Opsis2
displays 3D content without the use
of glasses.
It is the goal of Opsis2 to develop
original games that will enhance
the players experience by having
them interact within virtual three
dimensional spaces without visual
aids.
With glasses-less 3D being what
some call the final hurdle for 3D
to break through the team is
thrilled to be partnered with such
an innovative company.
Over the Fall 2010 Semester Opsis2
will be developing 3 to 4
stereoscopic games which will
explore different game play
techniques and environment that
benefit most from the added
dimension.
Please feel free to follow their
progress online at:
http://www.etc.cmu.edu/projects/ops
is2/
| Super Perfect Ltd | 2010, Fall | Silicon Valley |
| Project Ethereal Ethereal Project Ethereal is a student-pitched project that focuses on delivering sword & shield and spear combat in a player-versus-player online game environment.
Our goal combines the realistic cooperative strategy of the sword & shield and spear weapons formation to reveal how working together means survival on the battlefield. | ETC | 2010, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| S.C.I.F.I. Lockheed Martin - Advanced Tech in Science Fiction The Society for Collaborative
Investigation into Futuristic
Inventions, with the support of
Lockheed
Martin, aims to reach into the
imaginative
realm of science fiction and pluck
inspiration
from the vast selection of
futuristic
technology found there. With fruit
in hand,
we look to create the world of
tomorrow,
today, by breathing life into these
gizmos;
taking them out of your imagination
and
placing them into your hand. | Lockheed Martin | 2010, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| 90 Percent 90% is an ETC project focused on exploring how to simulate and represent the performance of non-verbal subtext in interactive environments. The goal is to design and develop gameplay mechanics that allow players to intuitively control and/or respond to the non-verbal intent (subtext) of non-player characters (NPCs). The initial inspiration has revolved around how to represent the expression of the four basic human emotions (happiness, sadness, anger and fear) as well as a character’s status (high or low). Further ideas could explore layers of interaction that enable players to intensify or minimize emotions and attempt to raise or lower NPC status. This layering could provide gameplay that is easy to learn but would have levels of increasing complexity as players create a characters and have to perform with them consistently given different emotional contexts.
The semester goal will be to develop a series of prototype scenarios that demonstrate the theory and application of sub-contextual communication in virtual environments. | ETC | 2010, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| AURA :: Microsoft Live Engagement Microsoft Live Engagement Team By empowering smart phones with apps like Twitterâ„¢, developers are creating new spaces for meaningful social interaction to take place.
Coupled with the use of avatars, these virtual environments offer great opportunity for human expression and personal communication.
Sponsored by Microsoftâ„¢ and in development at Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center, Aura is an avatar-rich app offering meaningful personal expression across Microsoft devices. With Aura, users will experience a more human approach to the actions, information, whereabouts, and statuses of their many friends and followers.
| Microsoft | 2010, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Bridges: STEM experiences MacArthur Foundation YouMedia Serious Game Bridges is creating a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) based game sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation. We will be working in partnership with the Field Museum of Chicago to create Flash based simulation that explores the goal of preventing Asian Carp from invading the waters of Lake Michigan. With the support of the carp scientists at the museum to ensure accuracy, we also aim for our experience to be fun and engaging. Through the game, it is our goal to introduce players to the complex global dilemma of managing invasive species. The game will include the sociological, scientific, and economic roadblocks that tend to slow down effective prevention. | MacArthur Foundation | 2010, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| California Academy of Sciences SPIKE (Scientific Personalized Interactive Kiosk Exhibit) is a client-sponsored project team designing an integrated network of websites and physical installations for the California Academy of Sciences. The goal of the project is to install a system to expand the Academy experience by connecting the interactions at the museum to the Academy website at home. Users create personalized avatars online or on kiosks in the front lobby of the Academy, and upon returning home, users are able to use their achievements at the Academy to compare their avatars’ progress with those of their peers. | California Academy of Sciences | 2010, Spring | Silicon Valley |
| Datacraft Inspiring Path 2 DataCraft is a client project located in Osaka, Japan, done in
conjunction with the NEC's CCIL Research Laboratory in the Nara
prefecture. The goal of the project is the create an interactive 3D data visualization tool to display and allow researchers to interact with data collected by the LifeLog system installed in the CCIL space. Additionally, this project is a joint venture between CMU's ETC and the University of Monterrey (UDEM) from which the ETC is hosting and welcoming four undergraduate technology students. | NEC corporation | 2010, Spring | Osaka |
| Electric 4 Education Sesame Street and Electric Company Literacy Game Team E4E is working in collaboration with The Electric Company and Sesame Workshop to create an intergenerational literacy game for 6-9 year olds and their parents.
We will be exploring ways to get parents and children engaged together in a game that will boost the child's ability to decode words, comprehend connected text, and build vocabulary.
Working with content from The Electric Company and research from the experts at Sesame Workshop, our goal is to make a game that both parents and kids will be excited to play. | Sesame Street and Electric Company | 2010, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Emotique and the Zoo of the 21st Century ZooXXI is a project team based out of Barcelona, Spain, working with the multi-media company Emotique and the Media Technologies Department at La Salle, Universitat Ramon Llul. Our vision is to create a new way of thinking about zoos for the 21st century by promoting a world in which people take responsibility for themselves, the animals, and the environment. This semester, we will bring a piece of that larger vision to life by creating an immersive, hands-on installation, one that will tell a story of positive human stewardship of the planet. Ultimately, we see ZooXXI acting as a buffer zone between the world of development and the world of nature. In the meantime, and with an eye toward our future goals, we will use technology and interactive storytelling to get us stepping in the right direction. | Emotique | 2010, Spring | Barcelona, Spain |
| Fluxion Fluxion is a student pitched
project from Entertainment
Technology Center(ETC) of Carnegie
Mellon University. It aims to
create an iPhone game using fluid
simulation as game mechanics. The
main concept of the game is to make
use of physics features of liquid
to solve puzzles by utilizing the
unique input controls of iPhone
such as accelerometer and Multi-
Touch. The goal of the project is
to develop an immersive game
experience and to explore the
possibilities of innovative game
mechanics based on fluid dynamics. | ETC | 2010, Spring | Silicon Valley |
| Fred Rogers Center - Mad Dash Mad Dash Mad Dash is an initiative with the Fred Roger Center to foster a connection between young children and the media, encouraging a healthy and active lifestyle. The team at the ETC is working with Fred Rogers Fellows Mary Gillis and Julie Polvinen to create Mad Dash, a game where children will engage in active play that helps them foster a connection with nature. The game is a take on the popular "Mad Libs", but instead of filling the blanks with verbs and nouns, they are filled with pictures of the child performing the actions that will help tell a story the parent and child can share together. | Fred Rogers Center | 2010, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Free LIbrary of Philadelphia Many libraries in the US are
discovering ways to become more
relevant in today's changing world.
Even though technology has fostered
the modernization of many
libraries, the libraries themselves
have not been able to break free
from outdated stereotypes. The
Free Library of Philadelphia has
partnered with the Entertainment
Technology Center to find new ways
to engage their users by
transforming the library into a
core institute of all modern
cities. Their goal is to be
recognized as a major catalyst in
the economic recovery of
Philadelphia.
Team FLiP was created to serve the
Free Library of Philadelphia in
their quest to invigorate the
library for its many visitors. Our
team has identified the children's
department as our main focus for
this project. Our mission is to
revolutionize the experience of the
library for children and make it
friendly for both parents and
children alike. We are
investigating different digital and
analog solutions to fulfill our
mission. | Free LIbrary of Philadelphia | 2010, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| I3 presents The ImininTech Project Immersive and Interactive Installations Sponsored by Iminin Technologies
and the Entertainment Technology
Center, the I3 team is creating a
two story exhibit which will
showcase ImininTech's latest
innovations at Carnegie Mellon
University's upcoming 2010 Spring
Carnival. This installation will
feature cutting edge immersive
technology such as a custom-made
interactive multi-touch floor and
an industrial motion platform.
Iminin Technologies has been a
leader in the biotechnology
industry since its formal inception
in 2001.
| ETC | 2010, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| iLearn Canimal English Language Studies iLearn is a research project on language learning initiated by NHN Corp which is a leading internet company in Korea.
The objective of this project is to develop a stand-alone English training iPhone application for Koreans using a speech recognition system. We will make the best use of multimodal interfaces of an iPhone to provide users more immersive and intuitive learning experiences. | NHN Corp | 2010, Spring | Silicon Valley |
| Innovation Oakland Innovation Oakland is a community-wide wayfinding infrastructure initiative that celebrates the Oakland community as an international center of new technology and research innovation. As part of this initiative, the team of students at Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center will develop digital kiosks with interactive LED touch screen displays and web-based data that will foster economic, intellectual, social and cultural interaction in the Oakland community. These interactive and engaging devices will highlight Oakland's unique assets while providing critical information such as community maps, public transportation schedules, bike rack locations, hospital facilities, community-wide events, museum exhibits, and Oakland’s many restaurants and retail businesses.
| Oakland Business Improvement District | 2010, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Lockheed-Martin Mediated Reality Recent technological advances are
making it possible to use head-
mounted displays with augmented
reality capabilities in order to
provide the wearer with a greater
sense of situational awareness.
These new displays allow computer
systems to overlay relevant
graphics and information on top of
the user’s normal field of view.
Such devices have obvious
applications in defense, emergency
response, and other industries. As
the technology develops, there are
several issues that need to be
resolved before these devices can
become practical to end users.
Information must be presented in a
way that does not confuse or demand
too much attention from the user.
Furthermore, the user must be able
to interact with the device to
access the information they want
when they want it, quickly and
easily. This interaction must be
intuitive and should interfere as
little as possible with the task at
hand. Working with their client,
Lockheed Martin, team In-Sight will
design and prototype a novel system
for layering, selection, de-
layering, and de-selection of
information for use with a head-
mounted, augmented reality display.
The techniques developed will be
aimed at helping to create a hands
free computing system for use in
high-stress environments. | Lockheed Martin | 2010, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Lockheed-Martin Physion Lockheed-Martin Augmented Motion Control Physion [‘fi-zhen] is a Lockheed Martin sponsored semester-long
project aimed at integrating the dimension of biofeedback with
controller-free gaming. Our goal is to deliver an immersive
controller-free gaming experience that will take into account players
physical and emotional states thus making the experience more
challenging and interactive. We’re looking to capture player’s heart
rate, brain wave, heat flux and galvanic skin response data. | Lockheed Martin | 2010, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Mocotila (Motion-Control Time-Lapse Camera System) Motion-control Time-lapse Camera System Team Mocotila is working to develop an affordable motion-control system for the creation of time-lapse video with camera movement. Unlike most time-lapse video where cameras are fixed in one position, this robotically controlled camera will allow the user to create dynamic shots with a wide range of motion, seeming to move smoothly along a path even as time appears to speed up and slow down. The team hopes to be able to use this to create some never-before-seen visual effects, and to put this technology in the hands of amateur and independent filmmakers. | ETC | 2010, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| PandaSE ETC/Disney Imagineering Panda3D Project Based out of the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) of Carnegie Mellon University, The PandaSE project is a software oriented project working in conjunction with the Walt Disney Imagineering company on improving the Panda3D game engine. The project strives to develop, implement, and document new features in the game engine, as well as improve the engines current abilities. More specifically, this project aims to improve Panda3D by developing advanced shader inputs for the engine’s shader system. In addition to these shader improvements, the project will also revamp Panda3D's 3D modeling and animation export tools. These tasks are not only desirable for Walt Disney Imagineering, but will better serve the Entertainment Technology Center and global Panda3D community as a whole by elevating Panda3D to a new level of functionality. Throughout the course of development of these features,the team will be working closely with the Panda3d experts within the community and Walt Disney Imagineering to ensure the high quality of the developed features. Moreover, The team will ensure this high quality standard through constant testing of the usability and functionality. Through this process, the team hopes to create a software package that will continue the Entertainment Technology Center’s tradition of supporting and developing the Panda3D engine. | ETC | 2010, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| PlayOnSocial playonsocial PlayOnSocial is an initiative of the Entertainment Technology Center and NHN Corporation, the most successful internet content service operator in Korea, to design and develop a fun and innovative online game prototype to be deployed in social networks. | NHN Corp | 2010, Spring | Silicon Valley |
| Project Mirage - International VR Contest International Virtual Reality Contest (IVRC) Submission Team Project Mirage is a semester-long project involving development of a new and innovative platform/interface as an entry to the International Virtual Reality Contest (IVRC), a Japanese-based competition held
collaboratively with Laval Virtual in France.
Our goal is to develop a highly interactive projection table that displays in three dimensions and is viewable from multiple sides. Utilizing recent innovations in fog
screen technology, we plan to make an
interactive display that gives guests a
window into an exciting, highly immersive playspace. | International Virtual Reality Contest (IVRC) | 2010, Spring | Silicon Valley |
| Prometheus Lockheed-Martin Crowd-sourced Gaming Prometheus is a Lockheed Martin-
funded research project that
explores the realms of complex
problem solving through
crowdsourced games. Crowdsourced
games use the enormous potential of
online multi-player games as a
medium to solve problems. The
objective of this project is to
develop an online multi-player
experience focused on exploring
emergent game-play. The end
product will be a game in which the
collective pool of players finds
new and interesting solutions to
the problems presented through the
game. | Lockheed Martin | 2010, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| SurfaceScapes 2 The objective of the SurfaceScapes project is to create a proof-of-concept for playing tabletop role-playing games on the Microsoft Surface Table.
Our existing system from the previous semester provides players with a set of features to enhance the combat and role-playing aspects of tabletop games. This semester, Surfacescapes will focus on further developing that system and providing robust tools for Game Masters to create original adventures.
We are taking traditional tabletop role-playing games to the next level, adding a new layer of immersive and intuitive gaming to the Microsoft Surface Table and assisting both GMs and players in enjoying exciting and engaging adventures. SurfaceScapes… what lies beneath.
| ETC | 2010, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| The World of the ETC. The ‘World Of The ETC’ project is an
interactive DVD, which explores the
Entertainment Technology Center at
Carnegie Mellon University. It will
show potential students, parents, and
sponsors the truly unique graduate
program offered by the ETC.
The goal of this DVD is to cater to any
audience by allowing the viewer
to use an interactive menu to choose from
different topics that they are
interested in. The viewer will meet students,
faculty, staff, and alumni and
hear their stories from the ETC universe.
This interactive DVD explores the school
curriculum, including the
immersive first semester and the projects
that students will be a part of.
It will also showcase the amazing networking
opportunities, and what
students can do with their degree upon
graduation.
This project will highlight the global
influence that the ETC has on
entertainment technology and show viewers
what sets the Entertainment
Technology Center apart from any other
graduate school in the world.
The ‘World Of The ETC’ project will provide a
powerful marketing tool
to faculty and staff in the attempt to reach
others who would like to be
involved and learn more about the ETC. | ETC | 2010, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| The Yume Project Kokoro Robotics Actroid Humanoid Robot Yume is the Japanese word for “dream.†The goal of The Yume Project is to bring an engaging personality to the Actroid DER-1 humanoid robot through the development of software and character. Working with Kokoro Robotics, creators of the Actroid, The Yume Project will develop an intuitive user interface that allows animators to quickly develop performances for the Actroid. In addition to software development, the team will look at what it takes to bring a robot to life through personality.
By using traditional character development techniques, the team will transform a mechanical DER-1 robot into a memorable living character named Yume. Through user testing and Maya integration, The Yume Project will develop interactions that excite, surprise and delight audiences of all ages, making Yume a reality.
| Kokoro Robotics | 2010, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| WMS Gaming Advanced Gaming Systems WMS Gaming is a leading Slot Machines Developer known for its advanced technology and radically new designs in slot machines.
In the current semester The 5th Suit team is set out to achieve two goals:
1. Create a communal bonus game that will involve Multi-Touch gestures.
2. Build a novel Multi-Touch form factor that will not only stand out as a unique product on the Casino floors but also aid in communal bonus.
| WMS Gaming | 2010, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| [mod]YouMedia MacArthur Foundation YouMedia Toolkit and Cross-media Working with the MacArthur Foundation, [mod]YouMedia is designing a modular tool
for building creative digital learning spaces.
Last year, project team CPeLevated developed a successful multipurpose space where teenagers can hang out,
explore and produce "new media," and participate in Chicago's YouMedia
mentoring program in the Chicago Public Library.
Team [mod]YouMedia strives to bring the success of CPeLevated to communities everywhere,
connecting them through shared innovative environments, a mentor community and an online network driven by the content
created by teenagers themselves. | MacArthur Foundation | 2010, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Bat-Tek Gadget Team The Bat-Tek Project, or more formally referred to as the Batman Technologies Project, is a joint venture between the wildly creative energies of Entertainment Technology Center-Carnegie Mellon University , the technical powerhouse of Lockheed Martin, and the venture capitalists from Wayne Enterprises. Based on popular DC stories of the famous caped crusader, the Bat-Tek team hopes to develop gadgets, technologies and tools that would aid Batman in his quest to bring about justice in a world gone wrong. Focusing on portability, practicality and usefulness the team intends to create proof of concept gadgets from off-the-shelf parts as well as custom builds to solve problems that could arise in potential mission scenarios ranging from hostage rescues to reconnaissance.
| Lockheed Martin | 2009, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| California Academy of Science The Entertainment Technology Center and the California Academy of Science have teamed up to enhance the experience of guests at the Academy’s new building in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA. The ETC hopes to apply its expertise in entertainment and technology to fulfill the Academy’s mission “… to explore, explain and protect the natural world.†With a planetarium, aquarium, indoor rainforest and a state of the art green facility, the Academy offers a myriad of topics and a plethora of content that is the cornerstone for creating a meaningful experience.
Conveniently located at ETC Silicon Valley campus in Redwood City, CA, team | California Academy of Science | 2009, Fall | Silicon Valley |
| Educational Electronic Learning Pathways Creating Digital Native Teaching Tools One of the challenges in education
today is helping schools and
teachers to identify and find a way
to integrate emerging games and
simulations into the classroom.
Through the Benedum Foundation, the
ETC has partnered with Intermediate
Unit 1, a regional education
service which connects the latest
in education with specific
educational needs and goals, to
address this challenge. Educational
Electronic Learning Pathways will
create a portal that IU1 can
introduce to educators. This portal
will be a place where teachers can
find resources they need and create
a community amongst themselves.
They will be able to rate and
converse about games and new media
that can best enhance their
classroom experiences.
| Pittsburgh Intermediate Unit 1 | 2009, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Fortunato Depero's Balli Plastici as part of Performa 2009 I Balli Plastici Depero Futuristi is re-imagining Balli Plastici, the 'plastic dance' created by Italian Futurist Fortunato Depero in 1918. The marionettes used in the dance encapsulate the Futurist ideal of machinery striving to break free of human control. Our goal is to digitize Depero's puppets and develop a toolkit anyone can use to create their own Futurist-inspired ballets. Our efforts will move the marionettes beyond mere appreciation, propelling them continually forward as living art.
| Museum of Arts and Design | 2009, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Fredutainment Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children's Media It is the goal of this project to stay true to the vision of Fred Rogers and provide meaningful, practical information to everyone in society. To this end, the Fredutainment team and the Fred Rogers Center are looking into ways of disbursing this information in an engaging way to the target demographic of home-based caregivers and independent daycare centers.
The current team will lay the groundwork for the project and build a prototype that showcases the potential and the social reach of technology based solutions to alleviate this problem. At the end of the semester, a tried and tested prototype will add value to the groundbreaking work being done by the Fred Roger’s Center. | Fred Rogers Center | 2009, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| innoVidea : Digital Video Library project Digital Video Library Trying to find a video among terabytes or petabytes of digital data is analogous to finding a needle in a haystack. Sorting through all of that data poses challenges not only for how queries are performed, but also in how effectively the results are presented. innoVidea, sponsored by Lockheed Martin, is a project at Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center and is an extension of the Informedia Project at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science that began in 1994 at a time when digital video was still relatively new. Informedia research applied speech recognition, image processing, and natural language processing to digital video resulting in a more robust video investigation. Our goal is to create a suite of interactive interfaces to enable a general audience to easily browse multimedia representations of the Digital Video Library (DVL), in an immersive environment. By creating a unique browsing experience that is efficient but also fun and informative, we will enable users to identify and exercise pertinent information and eventually empower them to succeed in “finding a needle in a haystack.†| Lockheed Martin | 2009, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Lockheed Martin - SpaceCube Pathfinder The SpaceCube is a project sponsored by Lockheed Martin to develop a game based on the new cube satellite technology. The project is also exploring applications and features to use with the cube satellite technology.
The objectives of this project are to collect user information, user behaviors, help visualize, simulate and provide solutions to some of the problems the cube satellite developers might face in the future.
The SpaceCube team will focus on developing a playable prototype that contains the core gameplay, game mechanics and the complete game design document. Furthermore, the game will be prototyped and developed in an intuitive and efficient user interface which allows users to customize their satellite system. We will also collect user data by allowing them to make decisions or accomplish some goals when they are playing the game.
| Lockheed Martin | 2009, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Lockheed Martin Serious Games - Atlas Lockheed Martin Serious Games Modern day cell phones are useful tools for keeping information within reach, and keeping our loved ones even closer. Yet, even on the cellular phone, there are some features which are considered more useful than fun.
The Atlas team , is a partnership between Lockheed Martin and the ETC. Atlas is focused on exploring the potential
within the cellular phone, and their aim is to turn two
traditionally non-social elements of cellular phone applications into something fun and engaging.
We aim to shift attention to the potential of GPS , Photo, and Video capability, Explore new gameplay, and rethink the boundaries for how these interpersonal devices can shape the world around us. | Lockheed Martin | 2009, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Microsoft Surfacescapes Surfacescapes The objective of the SurfaceScapes project is to create a proof-of-concept for playing tabletop role-playing games on the Microsoft Surface Table. We will be using Dungeons and Dragons as a basis for our prototype, with the option for future expansion to other role-playing games.
SurfaceScapes will provide Game Masters and players with a set of features to enhance the combat and role-playing aspects of tabletop games. This will include the ability to interact with the digital environment using real objects such as miniatures and provide automated calculations and visual and audio feedback for actions performed by the player and non-player characters.
We are taking traditional tabletop role-playing games to the next level, adding a new layer of immersive and intuitive gaming to the Microsoft Surface Table and assisting both GMs and players in enjoying exciting and engaging adventures. SurfaceScapes… what lies beneath.
| Microsoft | 2009, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| PANDAI PandAI Project Pandai strives to create a highly efficient and desirable collection of videogame artificial intelligence (A.I.) systems for the Panda3D game engine. This student-pitched project from the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) of Carnegie Mellon University aims to improve the Panda3D engine, which is currently lacking any kind of game A.I. framework, by adding to it a collection of A.I. behaviors such as seeking, flocking, and path-finding, amongst others. This addition to the engine will benefit the Panda3D game-development community by easing the process of developing computerized “bots†that behave realistically in virtual worlds both big and small.
During the course of this project, the team will be working closely with members of the Panda3D community, including some of the original Panda3D developers, as well as first-year ETC students who will be developing in Panda3D for their Building Virtual Worlds (BVW) class. By testing the usability and functionality of this A.I. repository as it is developed, the team hopes to create a tried and true product that will be a welcome addition to Panda3D.
| ETC | 2009, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Panoptics Panoptics is tasked with exploring how
to collect different types of imagery and data,
and display it in ways that can be easily
understood and manipulated.
Collected data might include visible light, humidity, pressure, temperature, location, audio, infrared, night vision, thermal, ultrasonic, audio, and magnetism. | ETC | 2009, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Project iDev iDev Project iDev is a student pitched project focused on developing innovative games for the iPhone and iPod Touch mobile devices, publishing these games to the app store, and building the framework that will enable us to continue creating games as an independent design collective. We are exploring innovative game concepts through extensive game research, rapidly prototyping multiple game mechanics, and embodying the experimental game design mindset. We plan on developing three full games throughout the course of the semester that will build upon what we have learned and created during our prototyping exercises. Our goal is to publish and market these games on our own as well as pitch one of our games to several publishers in the hope that it will be published by a professional organization. We will push boundaries to create innovative games and differentiate ourselves through a focus on exploring the new areas of meaningful play this platform has created. | ETC | 2009, Fall | Silicon Valley |
| Sun Microsystems Project Darkstar Project Darkstar Project Darkstar is an open source project administrated by Sun Microsystems.
It can be summed up best as follows:
“Project Darkstar is a software platform that simplifies the development of horizontally scalable servers for online games, virtual worlds, and social networking applications. Its revolutionary design will eliminate serious problems like zone overloading, data corruption, and inefficient server utilization, while enabling new dimensions of play such as evolvable virtual worlds and very large scale battlefields.†– Project Darkstar website (www.projectdarkstar.com)
The ETC project “Darkstar†will be making a number of games over the duration of the semester in order to test drive the Project Darkstar system and providing feedback to Sun about what is good, what is not so good and how we think they can further improve it.
Further, we will be providing the Project Darkstar server and a python/Panda3d client interface to the students currently taking Building Virtual Worlds in order to get more perspectives and additional feedback on the system. Further we will also learn how easy it is to teach to others, an important usability factor in the real world.
Out last goal is integrating Project Darkstar into the Panda3d to provide the engine with networking capability. | Sun Microsystems | 2009, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Chautauqua Interactive Chautauqua Chautauqua Interactive is a client-pitched project focused on exploring new ways to integrate technology into the theatrical performing arts in order to create a more interactive experience for the audience. Present-day theatre has developed into a rather passive art form in which the audience sits quietly and observes the action on stage. A fourth wall has been established through which audience members view the world of the play but can rarely interact with it. Through the utilization of modern technology, our team strives to break the fourth wall separating audience and fiction, and create a theatrical performance piece that is truly interactive for everyone involved. For this project, the Entertainment Technology Center of Carnegie Mellon University is collaborating with the Chautauqua International Festival of Arts, which will present its Festival of Arts and Innovation on the grounds of the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, NY. The goal is to deliver an interactive performance piece that will showcase the potential of the medium, as well as a symposium that heralds the innovative possibilities of technology-based, interactive performance art for the Festival. | Chautauqua Festival | 2009, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Chicago Public Library: CPeLevated Chicago Public Library CPeLevated is a client-sponsored project team designing a multimedia, multipurpose center for teenagers at The Chicago Public Library. Funded by the MacArthur Foundation and in partnership with Chicago Scenic Studios, we aim to create an environment in which teens can get excited about creating and not just consuming media. The room will house YouMedia, a workshop-based program run by scholars from the University of Chicago and taught by volunteer mentors from the community. It will also provide a place for teens to hangout, explore new media and develop a greater awareness of the library as a resource.
CPeLevated: Designing a new level of experience for teens at the Chicago Public Library. | Chicago Public Library | 2009, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Crayon 3D Crayon3D is developing a functional and easy-to-use platform for
use with Panda3D. Our end product enables users to create objects by drawing
in the air with their fingers, just like the hero of the children's book
"Harold and the Purple Crayon."
The Crayon3D platform provides the following features:
- Head Tracking creates a uniquely immersive 3D virtual space
- Finger Tracking allows guests to draw in the air
- Our Drawing Engine turns the guests' drawings into 3D objects
- A Physics Engine allows the objects to interact with each other and their
environment
Our well-documented API and demo will help you use Crayon3D to create
imaginative games and fanciful worlds in a new way. We intend to provide the
platform for use in the ETC's Building Virtual Worlds course, beginning in Fall 2009, so that students can explore the possible applications of these features. | ETC | 2009, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| FSN Pirates The aim of this project is to investigate, incorporate, develop and implement new broadcast technologies to enhance the experience of watching Pittsburgh Pirate baseball telecasts. The team has become acquainted to the existing capabilities of sports broadcasting in the Pittsburgh region through the Fox Sports facilities. The team will investigate the existing panoply of proven, novel, unique and experimental technologies that exist throughout sports internationally and will apply them to baseball telecasts. | Pittsburgh Pirates | 2009, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Get in Line 2.0 We all spend hours of our lives waiting – in lines at amusement parks, at sporting events for kickoff, and at restaurants for tables. For most of us, this is a tedious experience and often the primary complaint from guests at venues of all types. Get in Line is a student pitched project at Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center working to solve this problem. Last semester, the team designed and implemented a prototype experience for an on-campus show. The queue line was split in two and each side competed against the other using innovative cell phone technology. This semester, the project is taking the concept to the next level by launching an ‘at home’ component, where guests can create avatars that will appear with them in line. They will also be able to track their ‘lifetime achievement’ in the games they have played. The team is also developing new game types as well as looking into additional technologies to create a beyond the line experience. Our goal is to turn waiting into “something worth waiting forâ€. | ETC | 2009, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Growing Interest in Robotics & Learning Technology G.I.R.L. Tech G.I.R.L. Tech uses robots to intrigue, empower and inspire. Our team of eight students is working closely with the Children's Museum, Girl Scouts Western Pennsylvania and YWCA Greater Pittsburgh to make robotics accessible to a wider audience. Our aim is to create opportunities for young people, especially girls, to engage with robots in ways that are relevant to their lives and will help them build lifelong skills. | Pttsburgh Children's Museum | 2009, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Inspiring Path The Inspiring Path project is a partnership with the NEC corporation, a Japanese leader in electronics and technology solutions and home to the C&C Innovation Labs.
The CCIL's purpose is to research the possibilities of how computers and communications will change society in the next thirty years. Because the future of technology is only as good as human inspiration, the CCIL is only as good as the inspirations of its employees. To that end, the CCIL created the "Inspiring Path" to refresh the creative minds of its employees.
With a pressure-sensitive floor, screens lining the walls and a speaker system running down the hallway, the Inspiring Path is rich in potential as a place for relaxation, for the sharing of ideas, and socialization.
The ETC-Osaka team is tasked with furthering that potential. The team seeks to understand how new ideas form - in the push of the crowd, in the dark sea of a sleeping mind, or the serenity of a quiet moment - and transform the hallway into a crucible where inspiration can spark. | NEC corporation | 2009, Spring | Osaka |
| See-Saw Skill Based Games Many critics of MMOs say that they
put too much emphasis on Virtual
Skills and require little real
player skills, such as reaction or
rhythm. At the same time, many
developers find it challenging to
include player skill-based
elements in their MMOs. By
including player-skill elements,
they risk segregating players who
feel they cannot compete fairly in
games involving real player
skills.
In this context, Project See-Saw
is a research game project aimed
at finding the best balancing
technique to create a player skill-
based multiplayer game. A
successful balance technique
should help both very skilled and
less skilled players find the
right challenge and satisfaction
in a cooperative multiplayer
skill-based game.
| ETC | 2009, Spring | Silicon Valley |
| Serious Games LM Serious Games We are working with Lockheed Martin's Research and Development teams to create a program that will allow Serious Games to be prototyped and developed in an intuitive and efficient manner. This platform will be able to create a multitude of different games and scenarios that can collect information and help visualize, simulate and provide solutions to some of the problems we face. | Lockheed Martin | 2009, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Sketch-It-Up! Sketch-It Up! For one to be truly creative, a
cheap means of exploring and
discarding ideas is essential.
Artists rely on sketches to
inspire and refine their thoughts
before committing their creations
to paper, paint, crayon or one of
the numerous other mediums.
Game creators, for all their time and money spent in bringing an idea to life, have no such sketching process. Even the giants in the game industry use primitive tools like cardboard cut-outs and photo montages to express their game design and game play ideas to other members of the team. To alleviate this state of affairs, we introduce Sketch- It-Up!, an industry oriented, student-pitched project. Using this tool, complex ideas can be easily and cheaply sketched. The inbuilt library of assets lets you hit the ground running and complex AI has been done away with and replaced by something vastly superior – human puppeteers! By its very nature, showing off your game ideas to someone on the other side of the world is as easy as Connect and Load. Let the Sketching begin! | ETC | 2009, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Souda LM Microsoft Surface Tables We will develop several tools for our client, Lockheed Martin, for use with the Microsoft Surface table. We have three goals for the semester.
1. 3D Toolkit: We will build a 3D gesture library for use with the Surface table. Gestures will be designed so that they can be used intuitively in any 3D environment on the Surface. We will also develop a Surface Maps tool. This program will bring Google Earth functionality to the Surface table and allow users to navigate the map with our 3D gestures. Users will also be able to interact with the maps in various ways, such as plotting points or drawing vector shapes. 2. Data Visualization: We will develop a data visualization interface for the Surface table. The user will be able to define a problem and then enter observations including the time and space in which the information was observed. The program will display the level of certainty that a particular observation correlates to an expected scenario. 3. External Devices: We will research external devices that can be used or developed for the Surface table. This may include writing devices, RFID or wi-fi devices, or anything else we find useful. | Lockheed Martin | 2009, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Taomasters Taomasters is a strategic Role-Playing Game with a unique gameplay mechanic based on the written Chinese language. By combining meaningful gameplay, dramatic storyline and stylized art, our team is dedicated to make this game an entertaining, engaging and inspiring experience for players. | ETC | 2009, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| TeachCraft Curriculum of the Future The most recent generation of students has seen great changes in the technological revolution, thus making them digital natives at an early age. Meanwhile, schools and teachers try to educate using the same elements to teach their classes that they employed in the previous century.
The objective of the project is to help close the technological gap between students and teachers, by bringing new ways to use modern technology as support for the class and the teaching process | Pittsburgh Intermediate Unit 1 | 2009, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Trino Trino 2.0 The Trino team is a group of four graduate students and two alumni from Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center, in residence at Electronic Arts in Silicon Valley, California
The Trino team first gathered in spring 2008 to create an addictive and simple game targeting Microsoft's XBOX Live Arcade. In 14 weeks, the team built a vertical slice of Trino, ready to be certified by Microsoft for XBLA distribution and also playable on PCs. Now, in Spring 2009, the team has reunited to evolve Trino into a publishable full-length game. | ETC | 2009, Spring | Silicon Valley |
| WMS Electric Storm WMS Gaming After a first successful collaboration in 2008, casino machine heavyweight WMS has
returned to the ETC with the aim of continuing to define the future of casino
gaming. Items on the concept sheet for this semester include communal experiences,
lighting, sound, "4D" effects and other environmental technologies, and whatever
else the ETC can come up with. In grand ETC fashion, the project development team
consists of a designer-programmer, a programmer-designer, a modeler-artist, an
artist-manager, a mixed-media guru and an engineer-of-all-trades. The one-trick
one-armed bandit just isn't going to cut it anymore! | WMS Gaming | 2009, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Active-Adventure: The Winds of Orbis Active-Adventure 'The Winds of Orbis: An Active-Adventure' will be the Entertainment Technology Center's first interactive game for children that uses the Wiimote and DDR floor pad to put the guest into the shoes of an on-screen hero. This student-pitched project will use the expertise of resident medical experts to construct a measurable workout for the guest that focuses on progression through structured cardiovascular exercises and repeated body movements. There will be a devoted focus to take the player's mind off of burning calories and into game world immersion through revolutionary gameplay, a powerful art style, and a compelling narrative.
Our objective is not to replace traditional exercise for children; it is to offer an alternative to sedentary videogame-playing kids that would not otherwise consider a healthier outlet. | ETC | 2008, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| ARIEL Augmented Reality for Interpretive and Experiential Learning (ARIEL) is a project with the Franklin Institute focused on creating the foundation for an open-source software application that would enable science center exhibit designers to access the many methods of Augmented Reality. We will be designing the first of many features that the application aims to have. Specifically, we aim to develop software that would allow a user to detect differences in webcam feeds and execute actions based on the detections. The project also aims to devise the four year development outline for The Franklin Institute to utilize in future semesters. Future semesters’ development would include fleshing out features, adding technologies, and refining the interface. Also, future development would involve researching social networks for the design and development of MUSpace, the co-constructive learning environment that The Franklin Institute hopes to connect to all of the Augmented Reality exhibits. | Franklin Institute | 2008, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Get in Line Get in Line is a student pitched development project to create interactive experiences that can entertain people while they wait in long lines. Currently, significant hours are spent waiting in lengthy lines at amusement parks, events (like a haunted house, sporting event or new video game launch), and even at restaurants. Waiting in these lines usually creates a disconnect from the ‘total guest experience’ and is often the number one complaint people have regarding their experiences with entertainment venues and activities.
This project will develop a themed interactivity with a game play mechanic that captive line audiences can participate in. Ideally, the game that people will play will not only entertain them but look to make productive use of their time. We will attempt to model some interactive ‘Games with a Purpose’ hopefully collaborating with Luis von Ahn and other Carnegie Mellon departments. We will also look to utilize story aspects to integrate the game experiences into the ‘total guest experience’ for that venue. | ETC | 2008, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Interstellar Overdrive The Interstellar Overdrive team aims to truly push the envelope by creating meaningful interactive experiences at the Entertainment Technology Center. The team will work closely with Virtual Devices, Inc to use the existing ETC theming as a test bed for their technology and to create additional functionality and capability of/for their systems. The goal of the project will be the installation of this technology, as well as other innovative hardware and software, throughout the ETC to create a more immersive, interactive environment. The project will incorporate these technologies into the fifth floor Starship Bridge, the ETC Global Map, and elsewhere throughout the ETC.
| ETC | 2008, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| KAIST No Description | KAIST | 2008, Fall | Seoul |
| Omega OMEGA The Omega project is comprised of a group of 4 individuals of various backgrounds and disciplines. Working with Lockheed Martin, the team will be experimenting with various guest experiences, identifying some of the most cutting edge technologies, while developing new interactive programs according to our client's specifications. | Lockheed Martin | 2008, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Patient Experience The patient experience throughout rehabilitation after total knee and hip replacement can be filled with pain, fear, and uncertainty. Our goal is to create an environment which helps the patient through the rehabilitation process. By creating an interactive environment that gives the patient feedback and encouragement while showing them how far they have progressed, we can make the experience more bearable. If you have ever gone through therapy, you may have been told to go over to a machine and do the exercise for 5 minutes. This approach is used often when there are several patients to one therapist. The patient does not know if they are doing the exercise correctly or if they have made any progress, especially since progress is usually slow at first. These unknowns add to the unpleasantness of the therapy. We will create an experience that is fast and easy to setup that monitors the patient. We can then provide feedback to the patient to let them know how they are doing and show them how much they have progressed. The therapist can also use the information to enhance the patients therapy. | ETC | 2008, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Playground The Playground of the Future team has been charged with envisioning, designing and prototyping a playground for the children of today and tomorrow. Our design will integrate cutting edge technology with traditional and experimental playground design to engage today’s tech savvy children. We aim to design a space which excites children to explore the world around them, to think creatively, and to be active in their play.
Playground of the Future is a joint effort between the Entertainment Technology Center of Carnegie Mellon University and the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, and is sponsored by the Grable Foundation.
| Pittsburgh Parks | 2008, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Poptics Burton Morris Artist Burton Morris builds on the tradition of Pop Art masters of the 1960’s and 70’s. His art portrays everyday ideas and objects, transforming popular culture icons into thought provoking works of fine art. His distinctive style is characterized by radiant black outlines and vivid colors that emit energy and optimism in all of his artwork.
The aim of this project is to combine Burton Morris’ works with technology to create a high art exhibit. In what ways might Burton’s images become infused with motion and interactivity? In what ways might his works be transformed into kinetic art? The semester process will focus on working with Burton Morris and iterating across various ideas and concepts that would create interactive, immersive experiences that incorporate his artistic style and vision. | Burton Morris | 2008, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| SHARP Japan The SHARP project team is a team of students occupying a campus in Osaka, Japan. We are cooperating with SHARP Corporation to explore prototypes of cutting edge technologies. Sharp Corporation is a global corporation that is on the cutting egde of digital technologies. Also, we are the pioneers of ETC Osaka, Japan, and we hope to develop the campus for future classes. | SHARP | 2008, Fall | Osaka |
| Tea & Sugar Train Tea Train The "Tea and Sugar Train Team" is making interactive exhibits for the historical artifact "Tea and Sugar Train" located at Port Adelaide, South Australia. The Tea and Sugar Train was literally a shopping center on wheels that included a bank, a provision car, a butcher shop, and a relay car for transporting city luxuries to isolated areas.
The goal of this project is to help the Australian National Railway Museum make the Tea and Sugar Train the centerpiece of a new exhibit on the history of life in the Outback by bringing the old train to life using interactive technologies.
Our team is pioneering CMU’s cooperation with University of South Australia. Their role will mainly be doing historical research and providing the content whereas ETC will be focusing on the technical backbone of the whole project. | Port Adelaide | 2008, Fall | Silicon Valley |
| Active-Adventure: The Winds of Orbis Active-Adventure 'The Winds of Orbis: An Active-Adventure' will be the Entertainment Technology Center's first interactive game for children that uses the Wiimote and DDR floor pad to put the guest into the shoes of an on-screen hero. This student-pitched project will use the expertise of resident medical experts to construct a measurable workout for the guest that focuses on progression through structured cardiovascular exercises and repeated body movements. There will be a devoted focus to take the player's mind off of burning calories and into game world immersion through revolutionary gameplay, a powerful art style, and a compelling narrative.
Our objective is not to replace traditional exercise for children; it is to offer an alternative to sedentary videogame-playing kids that would not otherwise consider a healthier outlet. | ETC | 2008, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Alternate Reality x: Deep Sleep Initiative ARx The Alternate Reality eXperiment (ARx): Deep Sleep Initiative is a student pitched project exploring the use of the alternate reality game (ARG) genre across multiple media. While other games use video game consoles or board games with pieces as their platforms, an ARG uses the real world combined with many media channels (internet, telephony, live action events, SMS, etc.) as its platform. There is significant discussion today regarding this emergent genre and this project looks to explore the mechanisms of creating an ARG that, unlike most ARGs, is self-sustainable with individualized interactions utilizing various print and technology mediums. | ETC | 2008, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Bandology Bandology is a casual MMOG (massively multiplayer online game) about being in a band. Bandology began as an ETC student-pitched project in the Spring of 2007, and is now in its second semester.
One of the great strengths of online gaming is the ability to play with countless other people all over the world, but in order to interact with these other people, players are required to be online simultaneously. Bandology hopes to solve this problem and allow players of all types to play together by allowing for variable time commitment in their play. Additionally, creating a casual MMOG presents many challenges that would otherwise be non-issues in traditional hardcore online games. Hardcore online games benefit and reward people who are able to spend more time playing the game, thereby hurting the chances for casual and hardcore players to play together on a level playing field. Bandology allows groups of players to play cooperatively and collaboratively in a virtual band without having to be online and playing simultaneously. | ETC | 2008, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Classroom of the Future Future Classroom The modern education system has not changed much in the past 50 years. Our Goal is to create an environment where digital natives have the ability to experience education instead of watching it. We will develop a hardware and software strategy that will allow others to create immersive digital content that captures the students attention. | ETC | 2008, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Dr. Allevable's Lab Allevable's Lab As part of the Regenerative Medicine Partnership in Education’s spring program, our project involves the development of interactive content for a kiosk that allows guests to explore of tissue engineering. This will become part of a newly planned exhibit by the Pittsburgh Tissue Engineering Initiative, Inc. (PTEI). The installation will include party-style games and a translation of the website “Dr. Allevable’s Unbelievable Laboratory.â€Â
Our focus is to create an interaction that involves active participation from the guest using the kiosk unlike most kiosks that function solely as access points to static information. We aim to address young visitors and adults. Adults may be able to facilitate the interest of the younger visitors and keep them engaged. Although user interaction is primarily touch-screen based we might consider using buttons as well.
| Regenerative Medicine Partnership in Education | 2008, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Dragon Question Dragon Question is originally a BVW project in Adelaide, Australia. Best described as an Interactive Storytelling Station, its charming story, combine with fun interactions and adorable characters, became a favorite amongst visitors to the BVW show. Now, we are here to further work on and explore the boundaries of this new platform. | ETC | 2008, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Hatch Hatch is a project team located in Silicon Valley. We are working with Global Imagination's "Magic Planet," a spherical projection screen with unique potential for information and entertainment. Hatch's goal is to take full advantage of the Magic Planet's one-of-a-kind display, creating eye-catching, useful, and fun applications that showcase information in a worldwide context and interactive experiences that explore the possibilities of a truly 3-D interface. Hatch is developing for the Magic Planet in a partnership with Global Imagination, and creating content for a Magic Planet that will be on display at the Entertainment Technology Center's main campus in Pittsburgh.
| Global Imagination | 2008, Spring | Silicon Valley |
| Immunology Immunology Team Immunology of the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University aims to design an educational module about the immune system and regenerative medicine. To make this experience both entertaining and educational, our goal is to create a simulation and strategy style video game by incorporating game design based on medical information, immersive graphics and real time technologies. | Duquesne University | 2008, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Project CA- Cultural Awareness Cultural Differences Project CA aims at creating a 4-5 minutes short animated documentary addressing the issues of working in multi-cultural groups in a light-hearted manner. It will allow the audience to better understand issues when working in multicultural groups and thus avoid conflict or miscommunications arising from cultural diversity. | ETC | 2008, Spring | Silicon Valley |
| Project iMobile iMobile Project iMobile is a student pitched project for developing social interactive mobile experiences for the unique mobile platform of the iPhone, an Apple product. The iPhone provides intuitive interactions not available previously for mobile experiences, including: multi-touch screen, light sensor, proximity sensor, and the orientation sensor (accelerometer), as well as common mobile features such as Bluetooth, internet access, e-mail access, and more. The project will create multiple smaller applications to orient the team to the development for the iPhone platform. The culminating product will be a complete experience meeting the goals of something interactive, social, mobile, and intuitive. We welcome any and all input at our website forum. | ETC | 2008, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Projecx: XBOX Live Arcade Xbox Live (Trino) The goal of Projex team is to create a game with simple mechanism targeting at hardcore gamers. Before the end of semester, we will have a complete game and ready to be played on both XBOX and PC. We are aiming at XBOX Arcade. | ETC | 2008, Spring | Silicon Valley |
| Robot Hall of Fame The Robot Hall of Fame was created by Carnegie Mellon University in April 2003 to call attention to the increasing contributions from robots to human society. It has since been housed as a kiosk at the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh, PA.
The ETC’s Robot Hall of Fame project brings together a diverse team to create an experience for the permanent Robot Hall of Fame exhibit within the Carnegie Science Center’s new RoboWorld exhibit, due to open in 2009. The team will develop the physical design and interactive content for the experience.
| Carnegie Science Center | 2008, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| SHARP Japan For the second semester in a row, the ETC is showing Osaka what it does best- rapid innovation and development of cross-discipline practical entertainment experiences. Working in collaboration with Sharp Corporation, the team will be designing new and creative user experiences for the third time on an exciting and futuristic new project. Continuing this unique partnership with Sharp Corporation will help ensure the ETC stays on the cutting edge of global technological development well into the future by creating never-before-seen technologies for the world of consumer electronics. | SHARP | 2008, Spring | Osaka |
| Sonology This project is to explore the possibilities of sound and audio as the primary element of interactive entertainment. The core technology is the use of a game engine to create 3D sound environments that can be navigated and interacted with intuitively and without relying on graphics.
The goal of the project is to show that audio can successfully be the primary element of interactive entertainment. We plan to create an experience that is unique and demonstrates both the creative potential and emotional power of an audio experience.
| ETC | 2008, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Synthetic Interview Studio Synthetic Interview Synthetic Interview Studio is a project at the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University. Synthetic Interview is a unique, patented technology developed by ETC & SCS faculty member Scott Stevens and colleague Mike Christel which allows an individual to have a conversation with a character or persona as if that person were present in real-time. Our team of five students is working with a variety of clients nationwide to develop innovative web based interviews and physical installations using Synthetic Interview technology. Current projects include producing several interviews with NASCAR personalities for FOXSports, designing and developing an exhibit about Pittsburgh native George Westinghouse for the H. J. Heinz Regional History Museum, and expanding and documenting the Synthetic
Interview toolset for future use. Our team goal is to create immersive experiences which allows guests to have a meaningful conversation with a digital character.
| ETC | 2008, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| WMS Gaming The WMS Gaming Team is focusing on building a system which combines virtual or computer generated elements along with real, physical gambling tools to create a system to enhance the gambling experience. The idea is to design a system which allows a group of people to gamble and enjoy the experience together. | WMS Gaming | 2008, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Art Studio Our primary goal is to assist other ETC projects that do not have full-time artists on their team. In certain cases, we will also assist ETC faculty and external clients. We provide 3D modeling and animation, technical art, special effects, graphic design, compositing, video editing, and 2D concept art.
We are also here to provide a place where ETC artists can further their skills learn from each other, and pursue a specialization while broadening their skills in other related areas. | Student-pitched | 2007, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Augmented Reality Augmented Reality/Franklin Ins The AR project consists of eight team members working for two clients. Our goal is the research and development of Augmented Reality prototypes to be used by an architecture company and a science museum. Both have a vision driven by the importance of better fulfilling their client's needs. With our help, both clients hope to achieve more than just making new experiences…they seek to improve the well being of people beyond their given needs. | Franklin Institute | 2007, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Bamboo: Panda 3D Bamboo Bamboo is a student pitched project that aims to help incoming ETC students learn to use the Panda3D engine effectively. The project is also scoped to build an open shader architecture and an advanced lighting system into the Panda3D engine.
Bamboo runs workshops, creates tutorials, and provides documentation for advanced real time graphics techniques currently in use by the video game industry today. | ETC | 2007, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| CERT The ETC CERT team is working in conjunction with the Software Engineering Institute�s CERT team to create an interactive training experience to teach non-technical people how to identify and mitigate
threats of computer sabotage from people within their own company. | Computer Emergency Response Team | 2007, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Context: Gameplay Meets Character Context Gameplay Today, a video game player's level of attachment to games is directly correlated to the amount of time she or he has invested into achieving a particular objective. The goal of Project Context is to create an emotional attachment between the player and the characters in a game. To discover the most efficient way of achieving this vision, the team is working on creating rapid prototypes over the course of the semester, exploring radically different methods of evoking pathos and other types of emotional investment. | ETC | 2007, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Fashion Designer Fashion Designer is a video-game prototype using Panda3D that will give players the ability to create their own clothing designs in 3D characters. Players will use a realtime cloth simulation to cut and sew various fabrics and patterns to create their own outfits and then see their results in motion on animated characters. Fashion Designer is a collaboration with the Drama department of Carnegie Mellon University. | ETC | 2007, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Give Kids the World: Sweet Dreams Sweet Dreams Give Kids the World Sweet Dreams is a project at the Entertainment
Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University. Our objective is to
create an interactive experience for guests at the Give Kids the World
village that will provide a memorable encounter through a combination of
a themed installation, virtual characters, game play, and a physical
souvenir.
We are creating the next version of the Pillow Machine, a popular
attraction at GKTW that allows wish children and their families to
create a dream pillow infused with good wishes and magic through an
exciting series of games and interactions.
Give Kids the World and the Entertainment Technology Center have
partnered with Bob's Space Racers to create a reliable product for
installation in the park | Give Kids the World | 2007, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Independence Seaport Museum Seaport Museum This project will create a five-screen multimedia experience that looks at the evolution
of the Port of Philadelphia and the role that it played in the development of a great American city. The story of the Port of Philadelphia will be presented through video, still imagery, narration and the dynamic sounds of a 5.1 surround sound system. It will premier at the Independence Seaport Museum in the newly installed Digital Theater featuring a Sky-Skan Panoramic, Real-time, Multi-media System. | Independence Seaport Museum | 2007, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| My Story Teller Carnegie Library Literacy as Play!
The Carnegie Library team has been charged to create a unique and fresh experience for children that inspires a love for storytelling and encourages them to read. The finished product will be a portable installation that will involve other library branches and increase foot traffic and repeat visits to the children?s room at their main library branch. The experience will target second and third grade reading levels specifically but will be an experience that many other ages can enjoy.
The Carnegie Library Project is a joint effort between the Entertainment Technology Center of Carnegie Mellon University and the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, and is sponsored by the Grable Foundation. | Carnegie Library | 2007, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Polar Frontier Columbus Zoo Project The Columbus Zoo is creating an overall unique experience for its new Polar
Frontier development which will bring together all of the Columbus Zoo's
current bears while re-introducing Polar bears to the viewing public.
A key feature of this development will be to acquaint, teach, and inform zoo
visitors of the effects of global warming upon the Arctic environment. The
outcome of this project would be to increase interest and engagement with
the exhibit through entertaining interactions via two high quality games
downloaded onto a three-dimensional game kiosk. These games, developed by
Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center, would in turn
increase awareness of polar bear survival issues with regards to climate
change, hopefully initiating empathy and concern for the bears and the polar
environment in general.
An additional goal of this project would be to create a program that could
be utilized by zoos all over the country, as well as possibly linked
together. | Columbus Zoo | 2007, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Robots on Missions Robots on Missions (RoM) is a project at the Entertainment Technology Center at the Carnegie Mellon University to design an interactive kiosk and games for the Robot Hall of Fame exhibit at the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh, PA. The user manipulates the robots in the game to accomplish assigned tasks.
Robots on Missions ( R.o.M.) is a project at the Entertainment Technology Center at the Carnegie Mellon University to design an interactive kiosk and games for the Robot Hall of Fame exhibit at the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh, PA. The games will allow the user to build robots and help them execute missions they have been assigned, helping them learn about the different ways robots can help with tasks ranging from mundane to dangerous. | Carnegie Science Center | 2007, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| XO Games: One Laptop Per Child Project XO Games The Entertainment Technology Center and the One Laptop per Child Project (OLPC) are teaming up to make fun and entertaining games for the One Laptop per Child Project's XO Laptop. OLPC is a non-profit organization spun out
of MIT's Media Lab whose mission is to provide children in lesser developed countries a means to learn through the use of technology. To do this OLPC has created an ultra low-cost, durable, power-efficient notebook computer called the XO. With the XO children have the means to connect, create, and learn with other children around the world.
The ETC-XO Project, located at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, will focus on creating entertainment software for the XO with the hope of inspiring children who use the laptop. The team of four students will make games based on soccer (football) showcasing the unique attributes of the XO Laptop. | One Laptop per Child Project (OLPC | 2007, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| CasualCore CasualCore Gameplay is a game design and development project that aims to address the polarization problem of gamers where casual gamers (sporadic and little investment) and hardcore gamers (involved and large commitment) rarely interact together.
CasualCore Gameplay aspires to create meaningful connections between these disparate gaming groups regardless of skill level, play style, and time commitment. Hardcore and casual gamers alike will play recognizable games individually, but their actions in these games will have effects on other gamers of all types. CasualCore Gameplay hopes to create a game that will not only facilitate both types of gamers, but will also unite them in a way such that their roles are dependent on one another. | ETC | 2007, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| ETC Campus in Second Life Velocity Second Life is a virtual world which all the objects and scripts were created by the "Players/Users". There had been numbers of company setting up their customer/information services, and University school are conducting lessons online in Second Life. We had brought an island inside Second Life, it called the "ETC island", in this island we had set up videos of past semester projects we had done, information about ETC and question area for guest who are interested about ETC to contact with us. | ETC | 2007, Spring | Adelaide |
| Game Innovation The Game Innovation Database (GIDb) aims to be the definitive source for innovations of every kind throughout the history of digital games. We are connecting the growth of innovations in games through our branching "Game Innovation Tree." The tree will develop further as digital games continue to grow and blossom in new and creative directions. Our website is both a resource for those interested in studying the history of digital games, as well as a place of exploration for the casual gamer. | ETC | 2007, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| IGF Polarity Each year, independent videogame developers compete in the Independent Games Festival, held at the Game Developer's Conference, and the Guerilla Gamemaker Competition, held at the Slamdance Festival. Several schools (such as USC, DigiPen, and Full Sail) submit entries to these competitions each year, but Carnegie Mellon University has never been represented. The purpose of our project is to represent Carnegie Mellon University in the same manner, and further establish CMU as a premier institution in the student game development space.
Our development team is comprised of seven Entertainment Technology Center graduate students, who will spend the spring 2007 semester developing a videogame to submit to the 2008 Independent Games Festival and the 2008 Guerilla Gamemaker Competition. | Student-pitched | 2007, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Immunology The Immunology Video Game Project seeks to use the medium of video games and entertainment to teach and generate interest studies in immunology. Our target audience are children ages 9-14, and the game will distributed via an internet download and CD’s sent to educators throughout America. We hope to reach as many people as possible with an engaging video game that teaches and promotes education, extending the learning experience beyond the 45 minutes of class time students are exposed to during the day.
Our client is the Regenerative Medicine Partnership in Education, a partnership between Duquesne University and Carnegie Mellon’s Biology & Art curriculum. The Regenerative Medicine Partnership in Education specializes in creating educational Planetarium shows, animated films, teacher’s guides and interactive tools for learning about health and medicine. Our Project is supported by a grant from the National Center for Research Resources that seeks to increase awareness and interest in the fields of health and medicine. | Duquesne University | 2007, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| ISTP Game with Alice for Middle-school Education (GAME) team is interested in having middle school students use the Alice program, developed by ETC co-founder Randy Pausch, to create games focusing on interactive storytelling.
While teaching students Alice and developing game with them, we also research on 'girls and game development' since everyone would like to have more female friendly, gender neutral games: girls themselves, parents, educators, and the game companies.
Our client is the International School of the Peninsula (ISTP), an independent, co-educational dual language school for nursery through eighth grade students. With 25 years of educational achievement, ISTP is recognized as a leader in bilingual education and offers two 'nursery through fifth grade' bilingual immersion programs: Chinese-English and French-English. | ETC | 2007, Spring | Silicon Valley |
| LBE Studio The ETC's Location-Based Entertainment Studio, now in its second semester, brings together a diverse team to create entertainment experiences for a variety of clients. With projects ranging from complete museum concepts to complex theatrical elements, the LBE Studio works with clients to design and implement exciting location-based experiences with the ETC's trademark dedication to compelling stories and cutting-edge technology.
Current projects include concept development work for the Erie Railroad Museum and the American Music Crossroads Center, prototype development San Francisco's Magic Theatre, redesign of the Jam-O-Drum platform, and installations for the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh and the ETC. | ETC | 2007, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| me! online me! online will provide a means of conversing in-depth with your virtual self, permitting users to ask questions in a conversational manner (just as they would if they were speaking to you face-to- face), and receive relevant, pertinent answers. Any student would be able to show artwork, models, games, stories, projects online while a video of him/her describing his/her motivation and processes is shown on the side. The project will build on unique technologies available only to the ETC including Synthetic Interviews and a longstanding collaboration with research projects in digital video libraries, and collaboration technologies. | ETC | 2007, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Northrop Grumman Northrop Grumman is a global defense company that provides
technologically advanced products, services and solutions including
aircraft, naval technology, missile defense systems and space
technology. It is the world’s third largest defense contractor. Northrop
Grumman and the ETC are joining up for a second semester to continue
work in developing an interactive recruiting tool. In development for
the spring semester is an on-site head to head flight combat simulator
that will be present during Northrop Grumman recruiting events. The goal
of the project is to attract more attention to the Northrop Grumman
booth and increase awareness among young grads of what products Northrop
Grumman creates. | Northrop Grumman | 2007, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Progress - S.T.E.P S.T.E.P The S.T.E.P team is working in collaboration with the Heinz school's Program of Research and Outreach on Gender Equity Society (P.R.O.G.R.E.S.S.) to create an online Flash based game. The goal of this game is to teach negotiation skills to girls aged 7 to 12 years old and will be used in PROGRESS's "Win-Win" Girl Scout badge program. Through the use of training modules and role-play negotiation games, players will learn a wide range of soft skills that help them become more effective negotiators. In addition, we will be gauging the effectiveness of the game with a metrics reporting system that will keep track of the player's game progress. Our game focuses on three main ideas: turning negotiations into a collaborative problem solving exercise, realizing your best alternatives and recognizing opportunities for negotiation. | Carnegie Mellon Heinz School | 2007, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Project Spaceship Earth Siemens Project Spaceship Earth is a pioneering project based out of ETC-Silicon Valley | Siemens | 2007, Spring | Silicon Valley |
| Synchronicity The Synchronicity team is creating a
synchronous game, one where the game world,
its characters and the player all interact on-
beat, in musical time. We'll be submitting our
game to the Independent Games Festival, as
well as other venues! | ETC | 2007, Spring | Adelaide |
| University Libraries: iLit Project iLit Project Understanding information literacy is a critical life skill. In today’s world, people are starting to rely on internet references taken from databases such as Google or Wikipedia. While these sources are convenient and easy to use, the information may not always be the most reliable or accurate. Thus, it is becoming increasingly important to teach students 1) how to find quality information electronically, 2) that valuable tools and resources exist outside of the web.* The goal of the iLit Project, or the Information Literacy Project, is to teach university students the basic skills of information literacy, problem solving, and critical thinking skills through a highly interactive web-based game. It is sponsored by the Carnegie Mellon University Library System and Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center. *Source: Burkhardt, J.M., MacDonald, M.C., & Rathemacher, A.J. (2003) Teaching Information Literacy: 35 Practical Standards-based Exercises for College Students. Chicago: American Library Association. | ETC | 2007, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Animation Studio The Animation Studio is the first ETC art production house. Our goal is to fulfill client needs in the areas of modeling, animation, technical art, and special effects. As a large team of dedicated artists, we extend our services to other ETC groups, faculty, and external clients to help them realize their project's full artistic potential. The Studio provides a place where artists can challenge themselves and expand their knowledge in the realms of movies, games, and other entertainment media. | Student-pitched | 2006, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Claytronics Creating visual demos demonstrating the possibilities of physical rendering. | Intel Research lab | 2006, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Computer Emergency Response Team CERT The ETC CERT team is working in conjunction with the Software Engineering Institute?s CERT team to create an interactive training experience to teach non-technical people how to identify and mitigate threats of computer sabotage from people within their own company.
This semester's goal is to create a prototype training experience that will teach trainees to identify the warning signs that a co-worker may become an inside saboteur, and how to deal with potential saboteurs to mitigate the threat they pose.
In future semesters we hope to build upon this experience: making it fully interactive, polished, and ready for distribution. | Computer Emergency Response Team | 2006, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Extra Healthy Terrestrial EHT Extra Healthy Terrestrial is a mobile game for java enabled phones that combines techniques of
stealth education and keyhole gaming to create a unique experience for pre-teens and teenagers
to learn proper nutritional habits. The guest will control the environment and diet of an alien
explorer in charge of documenting an extra-terrestrial landscape. Using your mobile device to feed your
character via entering bar codes, the choices of food you nourish your character with will have an
effect on gameplay. On the go, teenages can explore their alien friend's world and check its health status.
The goal of this project is to produce a prototype that will showcase the innovative
use of mobile technology to create an experience both entertaining and educational. | ETC | 2006, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Game Sketching New tools and processes for videogame pre-production Game Sketching is a research project to develop tools and techniques to quickly and cheaply "sketch" the essential experience of a game design. A sketch is to a game what an animatic is to a movie. The goal of the project is to take a game script (character, set and interaction descriptions) and build a sketch of the interactive experience in two weeks or less, through the use of puppeteering and other time-saving methods. | Student-pitched | 2006, Fall | Adelaide |
| Jukebox Gameplay: Project Spaceship Earth Jukebox Gameplay Project Spaceship Earth is a suite of arcade games collaboratively designed by Siemens Corporation, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Online, and students at the Entertainment Technology Center. The games offer a fun and exciting look at how Siemens technologies make our lives better. Siemens, one of the world’s largest technology and energy companies, is also a world leader in supporting education with key initiatives such as Generation 21 and Siemens Science Days. Project Spaceship Earth will serve as yet another way that Siemens hopes to inspire the next generation of scientists, today. | ETC | 2006, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Living History Submarine The Living History project aspires to create, for the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh, an interactive audio visual experience for the visitors coming to the U.S.S.Requin located at the museum. A unique immersive experience focusing on how the submarine worked, how the crew lived and their unforgettable stories will be created using a range of kiosks, touch screen displays and innovative lighting and sound arrangements. | Carnegie Science Center | 2006, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Location-Based Entertainment LBE Studio The Location-Based Entertainment Studio is spending this semester developing engaging physical installations. True to our “studio” name, we are working with multiple clients, and, in doing so, are modeling ourselves as closely after the industry as possible. Thus far, our client list includes the Carnegie Science Center, America’s Music Crossroads, the Columbus Zoo, MGM, and Give Kids the World. Our work will include concept design and the planning of physical space. We will be assisting our clients with generating and honing ideas to fit their needs and specifications to create an exciting experience with the ETC’s trademark level of interactivity and technology. | ETC | 2006, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Northrop-Grumman Project NGP Northrop Grumman is a global defense company that provides technologically advanced products, services and solutions in various defense sectors, with products ranging from advanced aircrafts and shipbuilding to space technology and defense electronics.
Northrop Grumman is interested in creating an interactive recruitment tool for their website to help boost the recruitment of fresh engineering grads. The Northrop Grumman team at the ETC is working closely with their Integrated Systems division this semester to design a prototype of an interactive virtual tour. We will also be assisting our client with advice as to how the tour can be extended to serve all of Northrop Grumman, not just the Integrated Systems division.
This project exemplifies the increasing trend of companies embracing video game technology to reach their target demographics in a fun and interactive manner. | Northrop-Grumman | 2006, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Project ER Children's Hospital Project ER is an effort to improve the quality of care for both children and parents at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. Through the integration of interactive technology in the main ER waiting room, we plan to make that long stay a little less painful and stressful. We are currently developing games for touchscreen kiosks and physical toys for younger patients. Project ER is also researching methods to make the physical space more relaxing and cohesive. | Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh | 2006, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Skyrates Skyrates is a game design and development project which explores the idea of creating persistent games for busy people through the use of sporadic play.
Sporadic play is the idea that rather than devoting hours at a time to playing a game, you can play in five-minute chunks throughout your day. Skyrates is continually running, day and night, with your Skyrate character flying from place to place. You check in periodically, like checking email, and give your Skyrate commands.
Skyrates strives to create meaningful game play for busy people. Many casual games have been played sporadically, but bringing a persistent world to people with only minutes to play is a new challenge.
Because of the easygoing nature of its gameplay Skyrates has enjoyed a diversie audience including both men and women, ages 6 to 60.
Skyrates is in development for several platforms
including Adobe Flash, AOL Instant Messenger, Text Messaging for Mobile Phones, and an Online
Community Forum.
To find out more or to sign up for play testing visit www.skyrates.net or email beta@skyrates.net
| Student-pitched | 2006, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Skyrates: F06 Skyrates Skyrates ('skI-r&ts) is a game design and development project exploring different types of game play and multiple platform access points to a single, persistent, world. | ETC | 2006, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Spaghetti Circus Pirates Spaghetti Circus Spaghetti Circus is a non-profit children's circus that began in Mullumbimby, NSW in 1992. In November, the Circus will open their fourth big-top show, entitled "The Search for the Ultimate Pirate!" ETC Australia is helping to produce this four-pole extravaganza by creating high-resolution virtual scenery that will interact with performers and audience members alike.
Please join us in New South Wales as we embark on another high-seas ETC adventure!! | ETC | 2006, Fall | Adelaide |
| The Claytronics Project Claytronics Claytronics is an exploration into a new form of smart matter composed of myriad tiny robots acting together to physically render 3D shapes. One might think of such smart matter as self-reshaping, color-shifting modeling clay, forming physical objects with which humans could interact tangibly. This technology may sound like Science Fiction, but is actually under development at the Intel Research Lab of Pittsburgh.
Our group from the Entertainment Technology Center has been charged with making compelling video demos for possible Claytronic applications. One such application is Claytronic prototyping - the idea that in the future, people can physically render their ideas and designs for fast prototyping. Another application would be telepresence - the idea that people in different locations would be able to interact physically by using Claytronic replications of their form.
| Intel Research Lab | 2006, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| The Granny Project Granny Project The Granny Project is designed to take advantage of the ETC’s unique interdisciplinary project structure to produce an animated short film. The project is run like a real studio, with each team member focusing on their own specialized area of production. Industry-standard tools like Maya, Renderman, and NUKE, combined with a 35 machine render farm, give students the power to work to the fullest extent of their abilities and gain valuable experience for the future. | ETC | 2006, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Automated Web-based Entry System Or Meshed Environments Project Awesome To foster a greater social connection between the ETC project teams in Doherty Hall and the Pittsburgh Technology Center | ETC | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Building Virtual Labs Virtual ETC The Virtual ETC project began as a venture to combine Synthetic Interview technology with a realtime 3D rendering engine. The original goal was a basic "plumbing project" to integrate the two technologies. After a change in scheduling, the focus of the project shifted from software architecture to creating engaging and entertainment content. | ETC | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Earth Theater: A.R.R.G A.R.R.G The Aquatic Reconnaissance and Retrieval Group, was established on October 26, 2001 as the official name of this cycle's Earth Theater Project. The A.R.R.G. treasure seekers will be bringing adventure to audiences of all ages. | Carnegie Museum of Natural History | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Earth Theater: Cretaceous Chaos Cretaceous Chaos The Earth Theater project's first cycle sought to create an interactive, educational pre-show for the Earth Theater at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, PA. | Carnegie Museum of Natural History | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Earth Theater: Pirates Pirates The Earth Theater project's first cycle sought to create an interactive, educational pre-show for the Earth Theater at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, PA. | Carnegie Museum of Natural History | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Earth Theater: TimeMachine Ride TimeMachine Ride The Earth Theater project's first cycle sought to create an interactive, educational pre-show for the Earth Theater at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, PA.
The concept we chose to pursue was an interactive ride in a time machine through a river canyon in the Cretaceous period. During the ride the audience would control their flight and take pictures of the flora and fauna they encounter. | Carnegie Museum of Natural History | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| ETC | mtvU Game Initiative ETC|mtvU ETC/mtvU Game Initiative is an effort to leverage the ETC's experience from the two previous semesters of "Experimental Gameplay" while creating a
partnership with the branch of MTV Networks that is "dedicated to every aspect of college life." A true example of ETC philosophy, the project will assume the role of both technical and creative advisor as mtvU begins its foray into the world of gaming. | MTV Networks | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| EventScope Table This is a seven week project to design and implement technology that will be used at the Goddard Space Flight Center. The technology will be incorporated into the existing EventScope software. | Goddard Space Flight Center | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Experimental Gameplay 2004 EG 2004 Our goal is to find new and fun ways of interacting with gamespaces by rapidly prototyping a series of ideas. Every game you see on this site is the product of one person: one individual to design, code, and create artwork. Most were made in under a week. | Experimental Gameplay Group | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Experimental Gameplay 2005 EG 2005 Our goal is to find new and fun ways of interacting with gamespaces by rapidly prototyping a series of ideas. Every game you see on this site is the product of one person: one individual to design, code, and create artwork. Most were made in under a week. | Experimental Gameplay Group | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Game Sketching Panda3D Game Sketching is a research project to
develop tools and techniques to quickly and
cheaply "sketch" the essential experience of a
game design during pre-production. A
sketch is to a game what an animatic is to a
movie. The goal of the project is to take a
game script (character, set and interaction
descriptions) and build a sketch of the
interactive experience in two weeks or less,
through the use of puppeteering and other
time-saving methods. | Student-pitched | 2006, Spring | Adelaide |
| Game Sketching Coop - PeaceMaker New tools and processes for videogame pre-production.
The goal of the project is to take a game script (character, set and interaction descriptions) and build a sketch of the experience in two weeks or less, through the use of puppeteering and other time-saving methods. | Student-pitched | 2006, Spring | Adelaide |
| Gamenomics The goal of the Gamenomics project is to create a fun networked multiplayer business simulation game that can be educational both inside and outside the classroom. The game will assist students in grasping the most difficult concepts taught in an introductory economics class. | ETC | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Give Kids The World GKTW Revamp the Give Kids The World Theatre and create a 5-minute, "4D" movie about "Mayor Clayton's Birthday" utilizing special effects, lighting and sound. | Give Kids The World | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Give Kids The World Gold Star Project Give Kids the World Give Kids the World is a non-profit resort that creates magical memories for children with life threatening illnesses and their families. Wish-granting organizations coordinate transportation to Orlando, while Give Kids The World provides accommodations at its whimsical resort, attraction tickets and meals for a week-long, fantasy vacation. Since its founding in 1986, Give Kids The World has welcomed families from all 50 states and 50 countries. This will be the second project in collaboration with the Give Kids The World organization, the first of which was the creation of a 6 minute animated film with special effects to revitalize Julie’s Safari Theater, one of the buildings on location. In addition, Animateering, a virtual puppet exhibit where kids play with digital models of puppets was created to begin revitalization of the castle, the central focus of the resort. The castle’s revitalization will continue with this semester’s focus on developing the character of the “Star Fairy” and enhance the ritual of providing the fairy with a unique star from each child, which is then hung on the ceiling of the castle and eventually other building locations. This enhancement includes the creation of “Fairy windows” and a magical treasure chest, which the fairy flies between, going from the virtual world to the physical one and back again. In addition to this, every child will receive a “star passport” that includes the location of his/her physical star on the ceiling as well as a means to see a virtual picture show of all the pictures taken of the child during the week. Finally in addition to the aesthetic enhancements, the program will simplify the lives of volunteers through the creation of new interfaces for keeping track of the stars and by linking each child’s information to the star through the use of a decorative barcode on the back of it. | Give Kids the World | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| HazMat Hazmat: Hotzone is an instructor-based simulation that uses video game technology to train first responders about how to respond to hazardous materials emergencies. Hazmat: Hotzone is currently in development at the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University in collaboration with the Fire Department of New York. | Fire Department City of New York | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| I wuz here Several models were constructed for the animated short "I Wuz Here". These characters have a character all their own and are essential to the telling of the tale. Please click on the links to the right to learn more about our cast of characters and their evolution from the imagination to the screen. | ETC | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| InterAct During this seven-week project, we adapted the live Interactive Theater experience to be delivered on DVD-Rom for use as a training tool for Carnegie Mellon's Human Resources department. We used a word and pattern matching technology called, Synthetic Interview, to simulate the open question and answer session. | Carnegie Mellon Human Resources | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Interactive Theatre Initiative Virtual Meditation #1 is an innovative synthesis of technology and theatre first produced by the ETC in the Spring of 2002. It was the result of a collaboration between ETC students (Ken Strickland, Billy Mitas, Nate Jones, Dan Schoedel, and Bryan Jacobs). | Actors Theatre of Louisville | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Interbots Initiative Creating wholly-formed physical characters from scratch requires the work of many people from a number of disciplines. Our team includes people with backgrounds in robotics, mechanical and electrical engineering, industrial design, show control systems, graphic design, artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, psychology, and theater. | ETC | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Jam-O-Drum An interface device that encourages collaboration through sound, visuals, and gameplay. | ETC | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Jam-o-World This device allows groups of people with or without previous musical knowledge to have shared audiovisual experiences by integrating interactive music elements via MIDI with real-time video and computer graphics projections in a collaborative environment. Exploring this medium as a way to achieve community music making experiences and to encourage spontaneous, unselfconscious behavior has been a focus of her work. | ETC | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Japanese Language Learning Software Shadows Of The Damned ‘Shadows Of The Damned’ Shows Off What The Best Japanese Game Developers Have To Offer | ETC | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Jukebox Gameplay The purpose of Jukebox Gameplay is to create an interactive experience with an instantly recognizable connection between what you see and what you hear; a game so in tune with the music that you can play it with your eyes closed. Unlike other music games where the songs are chosen for you, any track in your personal collection can be used. All you need is our software and your song library. This is your music, empowering you to play like you never have before. | ETC | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| KC-135 Simulator The Preflight Adaptation Trainer are being developed to simulate the neurovestibular effects of microgravity so that they will be able quickly adjust to the actual environment, even during their first flights. Our VR system has exceptional potential concerning the amelioration of current preflight simulation and adaptation methods. | Carnegie Mellon's Computer Science Dept. | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Kodak Memory Studio and Sidekick The Kodak Memory Studio Hybrid 2D and 3D interface Evokes physicality of the product Provides intelligent automation of product building Provides intelligent suggestions for editing individual pictures The Sidekick Virtual Assistant An animated character with personality Assistant, tutorial, and advisor all in one Powerful within the interface Conversational interaction with guest Provides a face for the automation processes. | KODAK | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Location-Based Entertainment Studio World's Fair for Kids ETC's new Location-Based Entertainment (LBE) Studio is currently working on six distinct projects, all in various stages of development. Projects include new exhibits for the Carnegie Science Center, a new entry plaza and exhibit for the Columbus Zoo, concept design for the new American Music Experience complex, and a film-making experience for a new MGM Studio theme park in Korea.
The LBE Studio team members are no strangers to the themed entertainment industry. They have worked with companies like Thinkwell Design & Production and Walt Disney Imagineering. | ETC | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Magic Mirror Magic Mirror is the latest incarnation of the Entertainment Technology Center’s, Audience Interaction Project. The Audience Interaction Project has historically attempted to provide interactive experiences to large audiences in a movie theater setting. Audience interaction uses sensors to detect the behavior of the audience to affect a computer-generated experience. | ETC | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Master Motion The Master Motion project is using an optical motion capture system and wireless VR to explore how virtual reality can be used to learn physical movement. | ETC | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| mH20 Our product is an online experience of both music and narrative, where users can control customized graphical characters in a dynamic world. | ETC | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Microcontent Northrop Grumman is a global defense company that provides technologically advanced products, services and solutions in various defense sectors including aircraft, naval technology, missile defense systems and space technology. It is the world’s third largest defense contractor. Northrop Grumman and the ETC are joining up for a second semester to continue work in developing an interactive recruiting tool. In development for the spring semester is an on-site head to head flight combat simulator that will be present during Northrop Grumman recruiting events. The goal of the project is to attract more attention to the Northrop Grumman booth and increase awareness among young grads of what products Northrop Grumman creates. | Student-pitched | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Microcontent No description | ETC | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| MO'JOX Mo'jox is a 14-week, student-led initiative to explore and develop new methods for interaction with real-time optical motion capture. Using a 12 camera optical motion capture system, wireless virtual reality and static haptics, we aim to create stimulating and entertaining new interfaces for work, play, and exploration. | Motion Capture Interaction Prototyping | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Night of the Living Dead "Night of the Living Dead: Survival" is a strategy horror game. | ETC | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Northrop Grumman Project Gamenomics Northrop Grumman is a global defense company that provides technologically advanced products, services and solutions in various defense sectors, with products ranging from advanced aircrafts and shipbuilding to space technology and defense electronics.
Northrop Grumman is interested in creating an interactive recruitment tool for their website to help boost the recruitment of fresh engineering grads. The Northrop Grumman team at the ETC is working closely with their Integrated Systems division this semester to design a prototype of an interactive virtual tour. We will also be assisting our client with advice as to how the tour can be extended to serve all of Northrop Grumman, not just the Integrated Systems division. This project exemplifies the increasing trend of companies embracing video game technology to reach their target demographics in a fun and interactive manner. | Northrop Grumman | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Once Upon A Toon The Once Upon a Toon project is a collaboration with nationally renowned cartoonist Joe Wos to create a pilot episode for a children's television show. | Wos Studios | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Overlaid Reality bubble ORB The ORB or Overlaid Reality bubble is a inflatable fabric dome with a digital projector inside with a special lens that expands the image to a 270 degree. | NASA | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Panda 3D Panda3D is a 3D engine: a library of subroutines for 3D rendering and game development. The library is C++ with a set of Python bindings. Game development with Panda3D usually consists of writing a Python or C++ program that controls the Panda3D library. | ETC | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| PeaceMaker PeaceMaker challenges you to succeed as a leader where others have failed. Experience the joy of bringing peace to the Middle East or the agony of plunging the region into disaster. PeaceMaker will test your skills, assumptions and prior knowledge. Play it and you will never read the news the same way again. | ETC | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Pittsburgh Pirates Baseball Project Pirates In this project the Entertainment Technology Center is working with the Pittsburgh Pirates to create unique, novel and highly engaging interactive media for installation at the PNC Park – Major League Baseball field in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh Pirates Baseball project aspires to breathe life into the legends of Negro Baseball Leagues by blending interactivity with digital storytelling to create an entertaining, and educational experience. The objective of the project is to research and develop the ETC technologies that can be showcased during the 2006 All-Star festivities in Pittsburgh. Additionally, the team will further develop the baseball-themed game for the Jam-O-Drum platform to be incorporated into the PNC Park as a permanent attraction. | Pittsburgh Pirates | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Project G To break the stereotype in the minds of young girls of what programming is, and who should be doing it. | ETC | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Project Improv Our goal is research using the improvisational acting technique of status to
improve the behavior of video game characters, thereby providing additional
opportunities for emotional impact. | ETC | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Project Improv II Improv II Project Improv II will use improvisational acting techniques to improve on the believability of characters in games through the use of non-verbal communication. Last year, the original Project Improv explored the improvisational exercise of status and its potential when applied to the interactive game space. They presented their research and a working prototype at GDC 2005.
This year, Project Improv II is taking the exercise of the “To Be” lists and creating a tool which will piece together animations from a common library to generate characteristics of a given “To Be” list. This allows a designer to select a “To Be” category for his character and instantly have available animations that will intelligently express that character. This allows for greater non-verbal communication without having to generate individual animations for each interaction. We will generate a demo illustrating the potential of our tool, as well as a whitepaper exploring the potential for non-verbal communication in games and how it can be improved using improvisational acting techniques. | ETC | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Rat Maze of VR The Rat Maze of VR allows an individual to control another person's virtual environment by administering specific elements of manipulation in real-time. This tool provides a means to explore the myriad of techniques needed to develop non-linear interactive storytelling. | ETC | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Sim Benefits We want to create an experience whose philosophical reference point is the game "The Sims." In other words, rather than reading manuals about benefits, EA would like employees to be able to run a simulation and answer "what if" questions - much as using a spreadsheet allows accountants to ask "what if" and try different scenarios by plugging in different numerical choices. | Electronic Arts | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| SIs Synthetic Interviews Synthetic interviews have direct application to interactive entertainment. As part of the interactive experience the user may talk to characters, interview them. This exploration of characters draws users into the fantasy. They can discover plot elements and find solutions. | ETC | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Skyrates: S06 Skyrates Skyrates ('skI-r&ts) is a game design and development project exploring different types of game play and multiple platform access points to a single, persistent, world. | ETC | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Table Topia TableTopia is a wireless motion capture experience that merges virtual and physical reality through the use of physical interactions. | ETC | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| The Game Innovation Project Game Innovation The goal of the Game Innovation project is to study and quantify videogame innovation and to make our results available to the public. | Carnegie Mellon Unversity | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| The IAI Project IAI Our goal is to create technology that enables animatronic figures to become conversationally interactive. Further goals include allowing these characters to become aware of their environment, and react accordingly. | ETC | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| The Interplanetary News Network IPNN The Interplanetary News Network is a project of the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University. It was designed as component of a prototype kiosk package for guests at a Location Based Entertainment facility. | ETC | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| The Lumen Gentium Project The Lumen Gentium Project is undertaken in association with the Diocese of Pittsburgh, which proposes the construction of an ecumenical institute and religious culture center in the Pittsburgh region. The ETC will be involved with the creation of a promotional piece that will help present the vision and the concept of this great center to be built. | Diocese of Pittsburgh | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| The Robotics Channel Robotv Our goal ("Phase I") is to produce an entertaining and informative video tour of the Robotics Institute to intrigue potential sponsors to fund a Pittsburgh-based robotics museum/attraction/LBE. | Robotics Institute | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| The VIS No description | ETC | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| The Worlds Fair for Kids WFK and Quasi The WFK/Quasi team will be creating interactive experiences. These could include large audience interactive games, networked platforms, and/or immersive themed enviroments. The team will also be supporting many appearances throughout the country with Quasi the robot, the official spokes-bot for the World's Fair for Kids. | The Worlds Fair for Kids | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Virtual Meditation #1 Virtual Meditation #1 is an experiment in interactive drama. Two volunteers become the actors in the play by providing their faces and names to virtual actors, and their measurable biological signals are used as input to influence the performance of the play. | The Actors' Theater of Louisville | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Virtual Reality Puppets Virpets Virpets (Virtual Reality Puppets) combine traditional puppeteering techniques with the ability of a computer to render virtual characters in a virtual environment. The characters are based on computer-generated models, which are endowed with movable "skeletons" that define points and axes of motion. | ETC | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| VisionQuest Medical Game VisionQuest is a video game currently under development that will serve as a fun, free way to screen schoolchildren nationwide for vision disorders such as Amblyopia. Amblyopia, commonly known as lazy eye, causes more blindness and vision loss in Americans under the age of 45 than all other causes combined. A team of students at CMU's Entertainment Technology Center is working closely with visionaries at The Amblyopia Foundation of America and Childsplay Vision Systems, LLC. to develop an experience that is as engaging for children as possible by the time VisionQuest is slated for national distribution in public schools in 2007. | Amblyopia Foundation of America/Childsplay Vision Systems, L | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Wizards and Lizards The concept of Wizards&Lizards is the production of two small real-time motion capture games that employ virtual reality to immerse the guest in magical world. | ETC | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| X-Gaming Create a prototype of a single player game to allow casual game players to be able to play old 8-bit games without having to go through all of the hassle currently required. | ETC | 2006, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| BVW Infrastructure Our project is an investment in the students who have not even been accepted into the ETC program yet, our goal is to create a better experience for those students by repairing, improving, and building a better foundation for next fall's class. We recognize that a large percentage of creative energy is spent by students on technical barriers our goal is to reduce that effort so that future projects can focus on achieving their design metrics. | ETC | 2005, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Animateering: Puppet Workshop How do you play with something you can't touch? This is the basic dilemma presented to the Animateering project by the Pittsburgh Children's Museum. | The Pittsburgh Children's Museum | 2004, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Augmented Cognition The purpose of the AugCog project is, first, to create a technology that will enhance foot soldiers' experience in combat. | DARPA | 2004, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Benjamin Franklin Synthetic Interview Synthetic Interview is a software technology that allows people to interact in real time with a human personality. | Lights of Liberty | 2004, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Career Portals To design and develop an engaging career exploration website with key information and links to learning more about career decision-making strategies, preparation, and choice. | Heinz Endowments | 2004, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| CYSEC: Cybersecurity Training Academy CySec We are a project of Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center, a Masters program that fosters leadership in education and research by combining technology and fine arts to create new processes, tools, and visions for storytelling and entertainment.
This semester we are collaborating with the Carnegie Mellon Cylab to create MySecureCyberspace.com for Kids, an interactive Flash web game that aims to teach kids about cybersecurity and how to be safe online citizens. | CyLab | 2004, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Game Legends Beta The Game Legends team is working with X-Arcade to create to develop a program that enables users to buy classic games online. The cross-platform desktop application will be fully functional at the end of the semester. The team's goal is to produce a 'slick' application that is intuitive and easy to use, which will bring emulated gaming to a broader audience. | X-Arcade | 2004, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Interactive Dome Project The dome is a miniature, portable, inflatable planetarium. We, the ETC students on the Interactive Dome Project, have been charged with developing interactivity as a new feature of the dome.
* How can interactivity work effectively in a dome environment?
* What can we build to show off the capabilities of the dome?
The Interactive Dome Project is an exploration of these questions. As the initial project in a series of projects exploring and prototyping interactive dome experiences, we are focusing on three main aspects:
* Getting a 3D engine running with the appropriate spherical projection output.
* Exploring effective (and ineffective) uses of interactivity in the dome environment.
* Building and packaging a portable, interactive prototype experience.
| ETC | 2004, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Animateering: Children's Museum Animateering: Children's Museu How do you play with something you can't touch? This is the basic dilemma presented to the Animateering project by the Pittsburgh Children's Museum. | The Pittsburgh Children's Museum | 2003, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Aqua Lounge The goal of the ETC's audience Interaction Project is to explore engaging and interactive activities for audiences. Using a video camera, computer, green screen, projector, and projection screen, we are able to superimpose our guest on screen into 3D virtual environments in real time, with special effects. In addition, our guests can interact with the virtual environment and its inhabitants with special light emitting rings, and also through movement, both of which are tracked using real-time image processing on our computer. | ETC | 2003, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Branding Recognizing the diverse answers for "What is the ETC?" and taking into account the many efforts that have already been successful, the Branding Group seeks to create a unified design identity for the department and to transform our space into a professional studio atmosphere. Furthermore, we've obtained new technologies that we hope to employ in engaging and interactive ways. | ETC | 2003, Fall | Adelaide |
| DigiWaxx An Entertainment Technology Center project to create a way to distribute digital music directlly to an end consumer. | Digiwaxx Media | 2003, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| DJ Sez DJ Sez is an experience that brings the excitement of scratching turntables to the masses! It is designed for use on the Jam O Drum(see below), for four players to make music as a group. Dj Sez is equally fun for hip hop fans and anyone else who is out have a good time. It is ideal for installations in social venues like arcades, dance clubs, and malls. | ETC | 2003, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| ETC Applied Research Team Welcome to the website of the ETC Applied Research Team (or ETC ART for short). We have spent the Fall researching characters and emotions in computer and video games.
We have written a paper on how improvisational theater can be used in the design of massively multiplayer online games to evoke emergent stories with emotional impact. | ETC | 2003, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| National Aviary The ETC's Aviary Group has the goal of enhancing the National Aviary's innovative selection of immersive classes for students of all ages geared towards engaging their minds in the amazing world of science and conservation. | National Aviary | 2003, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| The National Aviary Aviary Group The ETC's Aviary Group has the goal of enhancing the National Aviary's innovative selection of immersive classes for students of all ages geared towards engaging their minds in the amazing world of science and conservation. | The National Aviary | 2003, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Augmented Reality Gaming Table ARPE Group By facilitating the placement of properly registered 3D models into a real-time video feed, the Augmented Reality Gaming Table opens up new possibilities for tangible, physical interfaces to mixed reality games. | ETC | 2003, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Automated Video Editor Informedia is a set of research initiatives (Speech recognition, Computer vision, Natural language processing) with the goal of better understanding digital video, and passing this knowledge on to computers for various uses in archiving, viewing, and editing. | ETC | 2003, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Biohazard As a result of last year's the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, CA, and the recent Faculty Seminar at Microsoft, a ground-breaking initiative has been promulgated that will bring together the Carnegie Mellon Entertainment Technology Center and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Comparative Media Studies program, in the joint creation of an interactive game dealing with BioHazard Training and Education.
Additional partners in this endeavor will be Microsoft and the Federation of American Scientists. A coming together of all parties will occur either in Boston, Pittsburgh, or both cities, during the early part of September. Indications are that the game will be developed for Microsoft's XBox, though it need be said that a XBox SDK will not be available until the latter part of September at the earliest.
The ETC and MIT will work together on establishing a division of labor for this project, but all indications are that the ETC will focus on game design (i.e., programming, game play, user interface, et al), while MIT focuses on factual verification of content, extensive user testing, scoring and feedback, et al). The goal of this project is prototype development, thought here are no limits on how much functionality can be imbued in the game.
Direct faculty supervision will be provided by ETC's Jesse Schell, but MIT's Henry Jenkins and Kurt Squire, and Microsoft's Randy Hinrichs will be involved intimately as well. | Microsoft/ The Federation of American Scientises | 2002, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Coyote210 To make a non-violent nature themed 3d game for the Earth Theater of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History using the Unreal Tournament engine. | Carnegie Museum of Natural History | 2002, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Dinosaurs Alive The Earth Theater is a state-of-the-art digital theater that takes visitors on the scientific adventure of a lifetime! A wraparound screen whisks the audience out of their seats and into an unforgettable world of exploration! | Carnegie Museum of Natual History | 2002, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| From the Earth Produce a tight polished show with doc beardsley utilizing frequent and non-trivial interactions using a branching story structure where the guests have the opportunity to choose the outcome of the experience. | ETC | 2002, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| The Aria Experience | ETC | 2002, Fall | Pittsburgh |
| Crowd Pleaser Crowd Pleaser is a group of artists, programmers, and innovators developing a themed group interaction experience inspired by the techniques explored by Dan Maynes's senior thesis. | Carnegie Mellon University | 2002, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Virtual Mediation #1 Virtual Meditation #1 is an experiment in interactive drama. Two volunteers become the actors in the play by providing their faces and names to virtual actors, and their measurable biological signals are used as input to influence the performance of the play. We are using technology, in the guise of biofeedback sensors, virtual scenes, and 3D face modeling, to turn select audience members into actors by involving them directly in the drama. Their desires and fears of touching each other, of holding hands with a stranger, become integral parts of the play itself, changing our perception of what is traditionally thought of as a theatrical experience. | Actors Theatre of Louisville | 2002, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Earth Theater Project Online Process Book | ETC | 2001, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| EROShambo The first seven-week cycle of the EROShambo project was spent investigating the concepts and tools necessary for the creation of a "smart-theater" in which live actors, robotic performers and virtual reality puppets could all be combined on stage in a seamless fashion. | Frank Garvey | 2001, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Computer-driven Upper Body Environment The C.U.B.E. The CUBE stands for Computer-driven Upper Body Environment. It is a 360° display environment composed of four 32”X28” rear-projected Plexiglas screens. Guests stand inside the CUBE, which is suspended from the ceiling, and physically turn around to view the screen surfaces. The screens are approximately 1’ from a guest’s face and extend down to his or her midsection. | ETC | 2000, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| Cybersecurity CS The ETC is working in conjunction with the Department of Defense (DoD), Carnegie Mellon Research Institute (CMRI), Masters of Software Engineering (MSE), and Concurrent Technologies Corporation (CTC) to improve the current state of network security training. | Concurrent Technologies Coropration/U.S. Department of Defen | 2000, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| DMC Delorean Create a low attention audio-visual-haptic interface for browsing, selecting, and personalizing audio entertainment for the interior of a Delorean. | ETC | 2000, Spring | Pittsburgh |
| The Dialog Engine The Dialog Engine A software tool which allows authors to take written character dialog and transform it into interactive character conversation. | Angel Studios and Frank Garvey | 2000, Spring | Pittsburgh |
