Radu Prodan/ITEC will organise the CERCIRAS Training School (on behalf of COST Action CA19135) from August 26 – 30, 2024 at the University of Klagenfurt. Details and programs will be available soon.
Sebastian Uitz and Michael Steinkellner presented their highly anticipated game, “A Webbing Journey,” at the biggest gaming event in Austria, the Game City in Vienna, from October 13th to 15th, 2023. This event was a bustling hub of innovation, bringing together game developers and enthusiasts from near and far. It offered a remarkable opportunity to connect with fellow developers and immerse themselves in a world of fantastic games from other indie developers and big publishers.
Nestled within the heart of Game City, our booth provided a gateway into the captivating universe of “A Webbing Journey.” Attendees of all ages were invited to step into the eight-legged shoes of our adventurous spider, experiencing the game’s enchanting storyline and unique gameplay mechanics. Our setup, equipped with a laptop, a Steam Deck, and a Nintendo Switch, allowed players to traverse the spider’s wondrous journey, leaving no web unspun.
One of the event’s highlights was our engaging interview with the FM4 radio channel. This platform provided an excellent opportunity to share the inspiration behind “A Webbing Journey,” explore the game’s captivating features, and show off the newest level in our game. We were thrilled to offer a glimpse into the game’s development process and reveal the magic that makes our project so unique.
From September 19-21, professors and students from the University of Klagenfurt met with FH Villach, FH St. Pölten, and HTL Villach students for the Future of Education Hackathon. During this event, they were split into three groups to work on concepts and solutions in AI, digital platform ecosystems, and gamification to solve various problems and improve the future of education. The gamification group consisted of Samuele and Elias from the master’s program Game Studies and Engineering and Noah and David from the HTL Villach for Informatics. Their supervisors during this event were Mathias Lux, Sebastian Uitz, and Wolfgang Hoi, with expert support from Fabian Schober on the event’s second day.
Throughout the 3 day event, they worked on a solution to utilize gamification to foster the development of skills, knowledge, and competencies and generate a motivating, clear, and exciting journey. Their solution consisted of a gamified study tracker, which tracks the student’s progress, recommends additional courses, and keeps the student motivated via quests and competition. This tracker is combined with the Study Buddy, an AI chatbot to interact with the student more naturally and ask them about their study, presents quests, and helps if the motivation drops. The final step of their solution was the “Job Tinder” which can be used to look for possible jobs in a fun way and which will recommend jobs based on the information gathered via the student tracker.
On the event’s last day, all solutions were pitched to a Jury, and after a lengthy discussion, the gamification team was elected as the winning team.
A video summary of this event is available via the following link. German only.
HACKATHON | The Future Of Education
From September 7-9, nearly 40 participants joined us at AAU Klagenfurt to discuss and theorise about the theme of “Video Game Cultures: Exploring New Horizons.” VGC is a recurring conference reinstated after the lockdowns, coordinated between universities and scholars from the US, UK, Czech Republic, Austria, and Germany. This year’s conference was an organisational collaboration between ITEC and the Department of English at AAU; Felix Schniz and René Schallegger were the local organising chairs. We had the pleasure to not only listen to a wonderful variety of perspectives and approaches from our participants in and around the field of Game Studies but also to cultivate a kind and constructive atmosphere. Many thanks to everyone who helped set up this year’s VGC, especially our sponsors!
Prof. Hermann Hellwagner is a keynote speaker at IEEE MIPR, 30th August – 1st September 2023.
Title: Advances in Edge-Based and In-Network Media Processing for Adaptive Video Streaming
Talk Abstract: Media traffic (mainly, video) on the Internet is constantly growing; networked multimedia applications consume a predominant share of the available Internet bandwidth. A major technical breakthrough and enabler in multimedia systems research was the HTTP Adaptive Streaming (HAS) technique. While this technique is widely used and works well in industrial networked multimedia services today, challenges exist for future multimedia systems, dealing with the trade-offs between (i) the ever-increasing content complexity, (ii) various requirements with respect to time (most importantly, low latency), and (iii) quality of experience (QoE). This situation sets the stage for our research work in the ATHENA Christian Doppler (CD) Laboratory (Adaptive Streaming over HTTP and Emerging Networked Multimedia Services; https://athena.itec.aau.at/), jointly funded by public sources and industry.
In this talk, I’ll explore one facet of the ATHENA research, namely how and with which benefits edge-based and in-network media processing can cope with adverse network conditions and/or improve media quality/perception. Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) are the classical example of supporting content distribution on today’s Internet. In recent years, though, techniques like Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC), Software Defined Networking (SDN), Network Function Virtualization (NFV), Peer Assistance (PA) for CDNs, and Machine Learning (ML) have emerged that can additionally be leveraged to support adaptive video streaming services. In the talk, I’ll present several approaches of edge-based and in-network media processing in support of adaptive streaming, in four groups:
- Edge Computing (EC) support, for instance transcoding, content prefetching, and adaptive bitrate algorithms at the edge.
- Virtualized Network Function (VNF) support for live video streaming.
- Hybrid P2P, Edge and CDN support including content caching, transcoding, and super-resolution at various layers of the system.
- Machine Learning (ML) techniques facilitating various (end-to-end) properties of an adaptive streaming system.
We are thrilled to announce the official launch of Fire Totem Games GmbH, a dynamic and innovative game development company based in Austria. After years of dedicated work and passion, we are ready to set the gaming world ablaze with our creative endeavors.
The company founders are Sebastian Uitz, Michael Steinkellner, Manuel Santner, and Noel Treese. We are grateful for the fantastic support from University Klagenfurt, the Game Studies and Engineering master’s program, ITEC, build!, KWF, and EFRE for making this happen.
As Fire Totem Games GmbH, we aim to craft captivating and immersive gaming experiences that ignite players’ imaginations and leave a lasting impact. With a talented team of developers and a burning desire to push the boundaries of gaming, we are excited to embark on this journey and bring our unique vision to life.
Zahra Najafabadi Samani, has been awarded travel grant to attend IPDPS 2023 in St. Petersburg, Florida, USA. Congratulations!
Title: Fast multi-rate encoding for adaptive HTTP streaming
Authors: Hadi Amirpour (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria), Ekrem Çetynkaya (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria), and Christian Timmerer (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria)
Abstract: According to embodiments of the disclosure, information of higher and lower quality encoded video segments is used to limit Rate-Distortion Optimization (RDO) for each Coding Unit Tree (CTU). A method first encodes the highest bit-rate segment and consequently uses it to encode the lowest bit-rate video segment. Block structure and selected reference frame of both highest and lowest bit-rate video segments are used to predict and shorten RDO process for each CTU in middle bit-rates. The method delays just one frame using parallel processing. This approach provides time-complexity reduction compared to the reference software for middle bit-rates while degradation is negligible. Read more
On February 8, 2023, EduDay – organised by the educational lab and students of the HAK 1 Klagenfurt – took place for the first time. Several hundred students were guided through the laboratories and got their first insight into research. CD laboratory ATHENA participated as well and presented background and results from the world of video streaming to the interested participants.
Find more info here.
Where does technology help us in our daily lives?
Interview with Felix Schniz, Game Studies and Engineering SPL @ ITEC
We meet Felix Schniz for an interview in Lakeside Park, in the CD laboratory Athena, building B12B, to learn something about him and his work and why he chose his career. For those who don´t yet know Felix: he is always neatly dressed, has a smile on his lips and is eager for a mutual exchange of ideas and opinions. So, he was quick to accept the invitation to be the first person on a new journey from “People Behind Informatics”. He is passionate about his work and is happy to share his views with us.
Hello Felix, thanks for taking the time to talk to us. Please tell me something about yourself, where you come from, and how your professional career has evolved.
I was born in Bietigheim-Bissingen near Stuttgart. I studied in Mannheim, with the focus of my Bachelor’s degree in English and American Studies. For my Master, I specialized in culture in the process of modernity. In addition to literature and film, we also dealt with digitization processes and that’s how I came to the video game area. That was my “unusual entry” into technical sciences. After my Master’s degree, it was clear to me: I wanted to write a doctoral thesis on video games. The academic path is simply mine, and the topic offers many exciting perspectives, as it is still unexplored in large parts. During my research for the right environment for such a research project, I met René Schallegger at a conference in Oxford. We stay in contact. When a vacancy for a university assistant was advertised at the Department of English in 2016, I applied for this position, started my doctorate at the same time and have been here since then.
Such a coincidence, and very lucky that you found exactly what you were looking for. How was your start at the University of Klagenfurt?
I started immediately and also took on the role of the SPL (programme director) of the Master’s degree in “Game Studies and Engineering“, which combines both – humanities and technical aspects. This is also what is special about this programme: the students learn technical approaches to video games and what kind of a role a technical medium plays in society.
What do you particularly like about your work?
I am taken seriously and can combine my passion for technology and humanities. I am very happy to question: What is the reason for that, what is behind it, and what else needs to be considered? I can live that to the full in my work.
And how did your doctorate continue?
In my doctorate, I asked the research question of what a video game experience actually is. It’s not that easy to name and has to be illuminated from many sides. Philosophically – psychologically – sociologically – media science… The path goes from one’s own, personal to the technical implementation. I wrote theoretical basics, worked with content analyses and scientifically processed my own experiences. This gave me a new, exciting field of questions for myself and research on video games – because how can we speak scientifically about the content of the medium when we experience it in such a personal way?
What consensus emerged for you?
Video games help us to get a bigger, better picture of people in the digital age. We have to ask ourselves what kind of influence video games in the future can and should have and need to raise awareness of what kind of responsibility video game programmers have. Programmers should also ask themselves what they want to offer people. The virtual worlds that open video games can offer us a lot, but we have to learn how to deal with them.
In short, I have to ask myself: What do I want to achieve with technology? What role should it play in my life?
Over the past few years, one has been able to follow what role virtual worlds can play in the lives of people. The well-known video game “Fortnite”, for example, was suddenly not just a popular game, but also a much-needed social meeting point, and a retreat for young people, whose social and private spaces were taken away by the pandemic.
Video games can be of great importance for each of us. They can offer us things we need emotionally, socially, or intellectually, or allow us to explore ourselves. This does not mean that the virtual should replace the real world – but it can be a great addition to it. In order to continue to pursue these thoughts in targeted extracts, I also wrote a lot about coping with grief in addition to my doctoral thesis. I am currently working on a book about the spiritual experience of interactive media in general. It will be published later this year.
Thank you very much for inviting us into your interesting area of work. We wish you a lot of joy and success in your favourite research area.