Scenior: An Immersive Visual Scripting system of Gamified Training based on VR Software Design Patterns

Virtual reality (VR) has re-emerged as a low-cost, highly accessible consumer product, and training on simulators is rapidly becoming standard in many industrial sectors. Combined with the continued advancements in VR technology, the interest in platforms that generate immersive experiences has increased. However, the available systems are either focusing on gaming context, featuring limited capabilities (embedded editors in game engines) or they support only content creation of virtual environments without any rapid prototyping and modification. In this project we propose Scenior, an innovative coding-free, visual scripting platform to replicate gamified training scenarios through Rapid Prototyping via newly defined VR software design patterns. We implemented and compared three authoring tools: a) Prototyped scripting, b) Visual Scripting and c) VR Editor for rapid reconstruction of VR training scenarios. Our Visual Scripting module is capable generating training applications utilizing a node-based scripting system whereas the VR Editor gives the user/developer the ability to customize and populate new VR training scenarios directly from within the virtual environment. We also introduce Action Prototypes, a new software design pattern suitable to replicate behavioural tasks for VR experiences. In a addition, we present the scenegraph architecture as the main model to represent training scenarios on a modular, dynamic and highly adaptive acyclic graph based on a structured educational curriculum.