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Multiplayer games can increase player enjoyment through social interactions, cooperation and competition. The popularity of such games is shown by current market trends. Especially networked multiplayer games frequently achieve great success, but confront game developers with additional networking challenges in the already complex field of game production. The primary challenge is game state synchronization across all players. Based on the current research, there are three main methods for this task – deterministic lockstep, snapshot interpolation and state-sync – with their own advantages and disadvantages.
This work quantitatively evaluated and discussed the vertical (entity count) and horizontal (player count) limitations of deterministic lockstep and compared the method to snapshot interpolation. Results showed, that deterministic lockstep has no indicated vertical scaling limitation with a player count of up to 10 supporting 16,000 or more entities. A horizontal scaling limitation could not be found either and lockstep was confirmed to work with 40 or more players while handling 1024 entities. However, both scaling dimensions correlate negatively, which was indicated by the maximum scaling configurations 30 players and 4096 entities or 20 players and 8192 entities.
An unoptimized snapshot interpolation implementation achieved a vertical scaling limitation of 4096 entities with 10 players and a horizontal scaling limit of 40 or more players with 1024 entities and therefore was found to have a lower entity limit compared to deterministic lockstep.
Furthermore, results are compared to related work. Other contributions of this thesis include an overview of game networks and the three game state synchronization techniques. An architecture model for deterministic lockstep including a hybrid approach combining it with snapshot interpolation for re-synchronization and hot-joins. And finally, a network packet deconstruction of the implemented networking framework Unity Transport Package (UTP).
Multiplayer games can increase player enjoyment through social interactions, cooperation, and competition. Their market popularity shows the success of especially networked multiplayer games, which pose new networking challenges to game developers. The main challenge is synchronizing game state across players. Research identifies deterministic lockstep, snapshot interpolation, and state-sync as primary methods for this task, each with distinct advantages and disadvantages.
This work, and the master thesis this paper is based on, quantitatively evaluated deterministic lockstep, demonstrating its vertical (entity count) and horizontal (player count) scaling limitations and compares the method to snapshot interpolation. Lockstep supports minimum 16,000 entities for up to 10 players and a horizontal scaling of 40 or more players with 1024 entities. However, a negative correlation between entity and player count limits was observed, which was indicated by the maximum scaling configurations 30 players with 4096 entities or 20 players with 8192 entities. Snapshot interpolation faced a vertical limit with 4096 entities and 10 players and horizontally with 40 or more players and 1024 entities.
The paper further contributes by comparing results to related work, summarizing synchronization methods, proposing a hybrid architecture model of deterministic lockstep with snapshot interpolation for re-synchronization and hot-joins, and deconstructing Unity Transport Package’s (UTP) network packets.
Today’s digital cameras use a mosaic of red, green, and blue color filters to capture images in three color channels on a single sensor plane. This thesis investigates the use of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for demosaicing – the process of reconstructing full-color images from raw mosaic sensor data. While there are existing CNNs for demosaicing raw images from the well-established regular Bayer color filter array (CFA), this thesis focuses on how they perform on alternative non-regular sampling patterns that produce less aliasing artifacts, namely the stochastic Gaussian- and the RandomQuarter sampling pattern (Backes and Fröhlich, 2020).
A basic UNet (Ronneberger et al., 2015) and the spatially adaptive SANet (T. Zhang et al., 2022) are implemented in a supervised training pipeline based on the PixelShift200 image dataset (Qian et al., 2021) to investigate their suitability for the irregular demosaicing task. The experiments indicate that the basic UNet encounters difficulties in restoring the missing color values, whereas the spatially adaptive convolutional layers help in processing the irregularly sampled raw images.
In addition, this thesis enhances SANet effectiveness by employing an alternative residual branch based on a CFA-normalized Gaussian filter, as well as a tileable modification to the Gaussian CFA pattern. The modified SANet is shown to outperform the conventional dFSR algorithm (Backes & Fröhlich, 2020) in terms of peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) and structural similarity index measure (SSIM).
Password-based authentication is widely used online, despite its numerous shortcomings, enabling attackers to take over users’ accounts. Phishing-resistant Fast IDentity Online (FIDO) credentials have therefore been proposed to improve account security and authentication user experience. With the recent introduction of FIDO-based passkeys, industry-leading corporations aim to drive widespread adoption of passwordless authentication to eliminate some of the most common account takeover attacks their users are exposed to. This thesis presents the first iteration of a distributed web crawler measuring the adoption of FIDO-based authentication methods on the web to observe ongoing developments and assess the viability of the promised passwordless future. The feasibility of automatically detecting authentication methods is investigated by analyzing crawled web content. Because today’s web is increasingly client-side rendered, capturing relevant data with traditional scraping methods is challenging. Thus, the traditional approach is compared to the browser-based crawling of dynamic content to optimize the detection rate. The results show that authentication method detection is possible, although there are some limitations regarding accuracy and coverage. Moreover, browser-based crawling is found to significantly increase detection rate.
The idea ist quite obvious. Anyone studying „Media Creation & Management“ as part of an international minor program should not just learn about international management topics and international media markets in theory, but also engage in their own media project as part of an international team of students – in this particular case, writing and editing as well as layout and production of a magazine on the topic of international media management.
This is exactly what 39 students of the International Media Management class did during the summer term 2023. And the result is the magazine you are now holding in your hands. The students looked at topics related to international media management from various perspectives, analyzed markets and dealt with international digital and media companies – sometimes using management tools, sometimes in a more scientific and sometimes in an entertaining way. The result is a magazine that is directed at students as well as lectures and those responsible for international exchange programs at universities.
Did the students catch your interest? You can find more information about the minor program “Media Creation & Management” at Stuttgart Media University (Hochschule der Medien) and the idea of studying in Stuttgart in this magazine.
The idea is quite obvious. Anyone studying “Media Creation
& Management” as part of an international minor
program should not just learn about international management
topics and international media markets in theory,
but also engage in their own media project as part
of an international team of students – in this particular
case, writing and editing as well as layout and production
of a magazine on the topic of international media
management.
This is exactly what 50 students of the International
Media Management class did during the winter term
2022/2023. And the result is the magazine you are now
holding in your hands. The students looked at topics related
to international media management from various
perspectives, analyzed markets and dealt with international
digital and media companies – sometimes using
management tools, sometimes in a more scientific and
sometimes in an entertaining way. The result is a magazine
that is directed at students as well as lecturers and
those responsible for international exchange programs
at universities.
Did the students catch your interest? You can find more
information about the minor program “Media Creation &
Management” at Stuttgart Media University (Hochschule
der Medien) and the idea of studying in Stuttgart in this
magazine or oline with the top QR-Code on the left.
Kind regards and see you in Stuttgart.
Yours
Uwe Eisenbeis
Prof. Dr. Uwe Eisenbeis
Dean of Studies, Program Media Management
The idea is quite obvious. Anyone studying “Media
Creation & Management” as part of an international
minor program should not just learn about international
management topics and international media
markets in theory, but also engage in their own media
project as part of an international team of students
– in this particular case, writing and editing as well as
layout and production of a magazine on the topic of
international media management.
This is exactly what 50 students of the International
Media Management class did during the summer term
2022. And the result is the magazine you are now
holding in your hands. The students looked at topics
related to international media management from
various perspectives, analyzed markets and dealt with
international digital and media companies – sometimes
using management tools, sometimes in a more
scientifi c and sometimes in an entertaining way. The
result is a magazine that is directed at students as well
as lecturers and those responsible for international
exchange programs at universities.
Did the students catch your interest? You can fi nd
more information about the minor program “Media
Creation & Management” at Stuttgart Media University
(Hochschule der Medien) and the idea of studying in
Stuttgart in this magazine or oline with the top QRCode
on the left.
Kind regards and see you in Stuttgart.
Yours
Uwe Eisenbeis
This study investigates the possibility of using Bartle’s player types for gamification
in the context of language learning apps. By taking user preferences into
account, this might assist in selecting the most suitable game elements. Learning
apps are gaining popularity as an innovative method for obtaining an independent
and flexible learning experience. Gamification keeps users motivated and involved
with the content.
After the research on the usage of gamification and its effects on the user, a language
learning app prototype was created. The evaluation consisted of a user test with
interview questions and the short User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ). The Bartle
test of gamer psychology was used to determine the player types of the participants.
The results show that, while player type and gamification preference can partially
coincide, there are too many deviations to confidently say it can be transferred into
gamification contexts. We conclude that game elements should not be chosen based
on a user’s Bartle player type and are more effectively used by incorporating a variety
of different gamification components.
The number of people with cognitive impairments increases together with the aging population. Thus, social robots are being researched to aid relieve the nursing
sector as well as to combat cognitive impairments. However, it raises concerns regarding how a social robot should relate to members of this group and what might
be appropriate. In this thesis, research about the current state of social robots has been conducted and focus groups with people from the nursing and medical field were held. To verify the credibility of the results and the scenario developed, final
user tests were conducted with representatives of the target group. When using a
social robot in an interaction with persons who have cognitive disabilities, the robot
should speak and behave more human-like and make use of its facial expressions,
stressing empathy and responding to the person accordingly. Though the situation
of interacting with a social robot may be more significant in future generations.
Virtual-reality (VR) is an immersive technology with a growing market and many applications for gesture recognition. This thesis presents a VR gesture recognition method using signal processing techniques. The core concept is based on the comparison of motion features in the form of signals between a runtime recording of users and a possible gesture set. This comparison yields a similarity score through which the most similar gesture can be recognized by a continuous recognition system. Some selected comparison methods are presented, evaluated and discussed. An example implementation is demonstrated. However, due to an introduced layer model parts of the method and its implementation are interchangeable.
Similar or even better performance is achieved compared to other related work. The comparison method Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) reaches an average positive recognitions rate of 98.18% with acceptable real-time application performance. Additionally, the method comes with some benefits: position and direction of users is irrelevant, body proportions have no significant negative impact on recognition rates, faster and slower gesture executions are possible, no user inputs are needed to communicate gesture start and end (continuous recognition), also continuous gestures can be recognized, and the recognition is fast enough to trigger gesture specific events already during the execution.
The increasing availability of online video content, partially fueled by the Covid-19 pandemic and the growing presence of social media, adds to the importance of providing audio descriptions as a media alternative to video content for blind and visually impaired people. In order to address concerns as to what can be sufficiently described and how such descriptions can be delivered to users, a concept has been developed providing audio descriptions in multiple levels of detail. Relevant information is incorporated into an XML-based data structure. The concept also includes a process to provide optional explanations to terms and abbreviations, helping users without specific knowledge or people with cognitive concerns in comprehending complex videos. These features are implemented into a prototype based on the Able Player software. By conducting a user test, the benefits of multi-layered audio descriptions and optional explanatory content are evaluated. Findings suggest that the choice of several levels of detail is received positively. Users acknowledged the concept of explanations played parallelly to the video and described further use cases for such a practice. Participants preferred a higher level of detail for a high-paced action video and a lower level for informative content. Possibilities to extend the data structure and features include multilanguage use cases and distributed systems.
Climate change is one of the greatest societal challenges of our time. The global food production alone accounts for 26% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Without dietary changes, the challenges of climate protection can hardly be achieved in the food sector. Technology has the ability to significantly change society and it can be used to change people’s attitude or behaviors.
The current study investigated the potential of using Persuasive Technology for guiding consumers to implement sustainable food choices. To evaluate its impact, an online grocery store was designed and prototyped using the Persuasive Systems Design model according to Oinas-Kukkonen and Harjumaa. The intended target behavior was to adjust food choices and make sustainable consumption decisions. The target group consisted of individuals between the ages 20 and 34 years.
The iterative approach of the empirical study was divided into four parts: First, the requirements of the target group were analyzed. Then a concept of the grocery online shop was developed using the design principles of the Persuasive Systems Design model. The concept Foodprint was prototypically implemented and consequently, evaluated via A/B testing with target users. Two high-fidelity prototypes were similarly structured with the only difference that Prototype A contained persuasive elements. Prototype B was intended to collect comparative data in the user tests. Ten individuals of the target group evaluated the prototypes and their impressions of the concept and food choices were examined to assess the impact of the Persuasive Systems Design model.
The data were analyzed qualitatively as well as quantitatively. Prototype A – with the persuasive elements – showed a more positive user experience. The evaluation of tests A and B revealed that the persuasive elements were able to influence users to identify sustainable food options.
In general, it can be concluded that testers from both tests, A and B, rated the grocery online store as helpful and would be willing using it in the future. However, it became also evident that the target group lacked knowledge to make informed decisions about the environmental impact of their food choices. As observed in the current study, the participants considered it difficult to assess the sustainability level of foods when grocery shopping. Their purchasing decisions relied on labels and erroneous assumptions. These observations indicate the need for more support in making sustainable food choices.
The Persuasive Systems Design model had the potential to influence the users in their food choices, suggesting that it may be an option to contribute to environmental protection in the food sector. Over time, consumers may even become more aware of the impact of their food choices and hence, could adjust their purchasing behavior in stationary retail stores.
Video games have a significant influence on our time. However, lack of accessibility makes it hard for disabled gamers to play most of them. Virtual reality offers new possibilities to include people with disabilities and enable them to play games. Additionally, serious VR games provide educational benefits, such as improved memory and engagement.
In this work, the accessibility problems in video games and VR applications are explored with an emphasis on serious games as well as a general lack of guidelines. An overview of existing guidelines is given. From this, a set of guidelines is derived that summarizes the relevant rules for accessible VR games.
New ways to interact with VR environments come with both opportunities and challenges. This work investigates the applicability of different hands-free input methods to play a VR game. Using a serious game five focus and three activation methods were implemented exemplary with the Oculus Go. The suitability of these methods was analyzed in a pre-study that excluded head movements for controlling the game. The remaining input methods were evaluated in an explorative user study in terms of operability and ease of use.In summary, all tested methods can be used to control the game. The evaluation shows head-tracking as the preferred input method, while scanning eye-tracking and voice control were rated mediocre.
In addition, the correlation between input methods and different menu types was examined, but the influence turned out to be negligible.
Web Accessibility is becoming increasingly important. Guidelines and according tests were created in order to ensure Web Accessibility for everyone. Detailed reports are created in order to advise content creators on this topic. However, these reports can be even more elaborate than the guidelines themselves with their very specific and technical vocabulary and their sheer length. This makes it hard, especially for non-experts, to understand what the results mean and to know where to start.
StroCards is a functional prototype developed to help viewers of Web Accessibility reports understand their contents easier. One way of doing this is by sorting and filtering identified accessibility issues. It can generate charts from the number of failed, passed and not applicable success criteria that highlight aspects that are not explained in the report itself. It can explain the user how well each of the tested website performs in terms of accessibility regarding different responsibilities. One of its key features is generating individual reports for individual responsibilities like e.g. visual design. With this functionality a designer like in this example, could receive a list of issues that are relevant to them without being overwhelmed by issues that they cannot solve. This creates a more efficient handling of the report. Besides displaying the report highlighting project roles, StroCards can have a more human-centered and empathetic approach by showing which user groups are affected and therefore excluded by accessibility issues on the website. This makes the long list of guidelines more tangible – especially for non-experts.
In the process of developing StroCards, some design decisions were made with a group of experts. The implemented functional prototype was tested in a qualitative and quantitative user study. It was perceived as easier to understand and better to work with.
A tool like this could wildly help people maintaining, creating, and developing websites to put these Web Accessibility guidelines into practice and consequently minimize exclusion of people from websites.
The capabilities of Artificial Intelligence (AI) are utilized increasingly
in today‘s world. The autonomous and adaptive characteristics
allow applications to be more effective and efficient. A certain
subfield of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, is enabling
services to be tailored to a user‘s specific needs. This could prove to
be useful in an information-heavy field such as Statistics. As design
research from SPSS Statistics, a legacy statistical application, has
indicated, statistics beginners struggle to tackle the challenge of
preparing a statistical research study. They turn to several sources
of information in an attempt to find help and answers but are not
always successful. This leads to them being unconfident before
they have even started to execute the statistical study. The adaptive
features of Artificial Intelligence could help support students
in this case, if designed according to established principles. This
thesis investigated the question whether an AI-powered solution
could elevate the users‘ confidence in statistical research studies.
In order to find the answer, a prototype with exemplary User Experience
was designed and implemented. Preceding research determined
the domain and market offer. User research was conducted
to ensure a human-centered outcome. The prototype was evaluated
with real test users and the results answered the question in
the affirmative.
The legitimacy of users is of great importance for the security of information systems. The authentication process is a trade-off between system security and user experience. E.g., forced password complexity or multi-factor authentication can increase protection, but the application becomes more cumbersome for the users. Therefore, it makes sense to investigate whether the identity of a user can be verified reliably enough, without his active participation, to replace or supplement existing login processes.
This master thesis examines if the inertial sensors of a smartphone can be leveraged to continuously determine whether the device is currently in possession of its legitimate owner or by another person. To this end, an approach proposed in related studies will be implemented and examined in detail. This approach is based on the use of a so-called Siamese artificial neural network to transform the measured values of the sensors into a new vector that can be classified more reliably.
It is demonstrated that the reported results of the proposed approach can be reproduced under certain conditions. However, if the same model is used under conditions that are closer to a real-world application, its reliability decreases significantly. Therefore, a variant of the proposed approach is derived whose results are superior to the original model under real conditions.
The thesis concludes with concrete recommendations for further development of the model and provides methodological suggestions for improving the quality of research in the topic of "Continuous Authentication".
Privacy in Social Networks
(2016)
Online Social Networks (OSNs) are heavily used today and despite of all privacy concerns found a way into our daily life. After showing how heavy data collection is a violation of the user's privacy, this thesis establishes mandatory and optional requirements for a Privacy orientated Online Social Network (POSN). It evaluates twelve existing POSNs in general and in regard to those requirements. The paper will find that none of these POSNs are able to fulfill the requirements and therefore proposes features and patterns as a reference architecture.
Head Mounted Displays (HMD) are increasingly used in various industries. But apart from the industry environment, the potentials of HMDs in a private environment like at home has been rel- atively unexplored so far. What daily tasks can these help with, in the home kitchen for example?
The aim of this thesis is to obtain knowledge about the usefulness of such an HMD, the HoloLens, in combination with an application, while following a new recipe. Therefore a prototype applica- tion for the HoloLens got developed which guides a user through the cooking of a sushi burger by using multimedia content.
With a mixed method design, consisting of quantitative and qualitative methods, the HoloLens in combination with an application was evaluated by 14 participants.
Not only the weight of the device was a problem for users. The test also revealed that the display is darkening the view and participants tend to look below the glasses. An advantage is indeed to reach the next cooking step without the need of using hands and always having in sight what needs to be done next. Positive feedback was given as well for the application. Through voice control the user communicates to a character which will guide through the recipe by videos and text.
If in future the technical characteristics of HMD devices will improve, an application in this con- text will be of advantage in order to simplify learning a new recipe. This device, in combination with an application, could help early-middle stage cognitive impaired people and blind people to cook.
Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) are increasing in both popularity and scale.
One of the reasons for this is that interacting with human counterparts is typically considered much more interesting than playing against an Artificial Intelligence.
Although the visual quality of game worlds has increased over the past years,they often fall short in providing consistency with regard to behavior and interactivity.
This is especially true for the game worlds of MMOGs. One way of making a game world feel more alive is to implement a Fire Propagation System that defines show fire spreads in the game world. Singleplayer games like Far Cry 2 and The Legend of Zelda:
Breath of the Wild already feature implementations of such a system. As far as the author of this thesis knows, however, noMMOGwith an implemented Fire Propagation System has been released yet. This work introduces two approaches for developing such a system for a MMOG with a client-server architecture.
It was implemented using the proprietary game engine Snowdrop. The approaches presented in this thesis can be used as a basis for developing a Fire Propagation System and can be adjusted easily to fit the needs of a specific project.
Large-scale computing platforms, like the IBM System z mainframe, are often administrated in an out-of-band manner, with a large portion of the systems management software running on dedicated servers which cause extra hardware costs. Splitting up systems management applications into smaller services and spreading them over the platform itself likewise is an approach that potentially helps with increasing the utilization of platform-internal resources, while at the same time lowering the need for external server hardware, which would reduce the extra costs significantly. However, with regard to IBM System z, this raises the general question how a great number of critical services can be run and managed reliably on a heterogeneous computing landscape, as out-of-band servers and internal processor modules do not share the same processor architecture.
In this thesis, we introduce our prototypical design of a microservice infrastructure for multi-architecture environments, which we completely built upon preexisting open source projects and features they already bring along. We present how scheduling of services according to application-specific requirements and particularities can be achieved in a way that offers maximum transparency and comfort for platform operators and users.