Any citizen can be involved in a situation that requires basic first aid knowledge. For this reason, it is important to be trained in this kind of activity. Serious games have been presented as a good option to integrate entertainment into the coaching process. This work presents a video game for mobile platforms which facilitate the formation and training in the PWA (Protect, Warn, Aid) first aid protocol. Users have to overcome a series of challenges to bring theoretical concepts closer to practice. To easily change the point of view of the game play, Augmented Reality technology has been used. In order to make each game looks different, neural networks have been implemented to perform the behavior of the Non-Playable Characters autonomous. Finally, in order to evaluate the quality and playability of the application, as well as the motivation and learning of content, several experiments were carried out with a sample of 50 people aged between 18 and 26. The obtained results confirm the playability and attractiveness of the video game, the increase of interest in learning first aid, as well as the greater fixation of the different concepts dealt with in the video game. The results support that this application facilitates and improves the learning of first aid protocols, making it more enjoyable, attractive, and practical.

Vegetation plays a major role in the realistic display of outdoor scenes. However, manual plant placement can be tedious. For this reason this paper presents a new proposal in the field of procedural modeling of natural scenes. This method creates plant ecosystems that maximizes the covered space by optimizing an objective function subject to a series of constraints defined by a system of inequalities. This system includes the constraints of the environment taking into account characteristics of the terrain and the plant species involved. Once the inequality system has been defined, a solution will be obtained that tries to maximize the radius of the projected area of the trees and therefore the extension of the vegetation cover on the ground. The technique eliminates the trees that do not achieve a minimum growth radius, simulating the typical competitive process of nature. Results show the good performance and the high visual quality of the ecosystems obtained by the proposed technique. The use of this kind of optimization techniques could be used to solve other procedural modeling problems in other fields of application.

With the rise of virtual avatars in professional, educational, and recreational settings, this study investigates how different avatar types—varying in realism, gender, and identity—affect user perceptions of embodiment, acceptability, technostress, privacy, and preferences. Two studies were conducted with 42 participants in Study 1 and 40 in Study 2, including professionals and students with varying VR experiences. In Study 1, participants used pre-assigned avatars they could control during interactions. In Study 2, an interviewer used different avatars to interact with participants and assess their impact. Questionnaires and correlation analyses measured embodiment, technostress, privacy, and preference variations across contexts. Results showed that hyper-realistic avatars resembling the user enhanced perceived embodiment and credibility in professional and educational settings, while non-realistic avatars were preferred in recreational contexts, particularly when interacting with strangers. Technostress was generally low, though younger users were more sensitive to avatar appearance, and privacy concerns increased when avatars were controlled by others. Gender differences emerged, with women expressing more concern about appearance and men preferring same-gender avatars in professional environments. These findings highlight the need for VR platform designers to balance realism with user comfort and address privacy concerns to encourage broader adoption in professional and educational applications.

With the rise of virtual avatars in professional, educational, and recreational settings, this study investigates how different avatar types, with variations in gender and identity affect user perceptions of embodiment, acceptability, technostress, privacy, and preferences. To examine these factors, two studies were conducted in controlled virtual meeting environments. In Study 1, participants controlled their own avatars, while in Study 2, an interviewer used various avatars. Questionnaires and correlation analyses were employed to assess the impact of avatar characteristics on perceived embodiment, technostress, privacy, and preferences across different contexts. Results showed that hyper-realistic avatars, especially those resembling the user, enhanced perceived embodiment and were rated higher for credibility in professional and educational contexts. In contrast, non-realistic avatars were favored in recreational settings, particularly when interacting with strangers. Technostress was generally low, though younger users exhibited more sensitivity to avatar appearance, and privacy concerns increased when avatars were used by others. Gender differences also emerged, with women expressing more concern about appearance and men preferring same-gender avatars in professional and educational settings. Balancing realism with user comfort and addressing privacy concerns are essential for broader adoption.

Plants and trees are an essential part of outdoor scenes. They are represented by such a vast number of polygons that performing real-time visualization is still a problem in spite of the advantages of the hardware. Some methods have appeared to solve this drawback based on point- or image-based rendering. However, geometry representation is required in some interactive applications. This work presents a simplification method that deals with the geometry of the foliage, reducing the number of primitives that represent these objects and making their interactive visualization possible. It is based on an image-based simplification that establishes an order of leaf pruning and reduces the complexity of the canopies of trees and plants. The proposed simplification method is viewpoint-driven and uses the mutual information in order to choose the leaf to prune. Moreover, this simplification method avoids the pruned appearance of the tree that is usually produced when a foliage representation is formed by a reduced number of leaves. The error introduced every time a leaf is pruned is compensated for if the size of the nearest leaf is altered to preserve the leafy appearance of the foliage. Results demonstrate the good quality and time performance of the presented work.