Using Ontologies for Modeling Virtual Reality Scenarios

Serious games with 3D interfaces are Virtual Reality (VR) systems that are becoming common for the training of military and emergency teams. A platform for the development of serious games should allow the addition of semantics to the virtual environment and the modularization of the artificial intelligence controlling the behaviors of non-playing characters in order to support a productive end-user development environment. In this paper, we report the ontology design activity performed in the context of the PRESTO project aiming to realize a conceptual model able to abstract the developers from the graphical and geometrical properties of the entities in the virtual reality, as well as the behavioral models associated to the non-playing characters. The feasibility of the proposed solution has been validated through real-world examples and discussed with the actors using the modeled ontologies in every day practical activities.