This week, we completed adding all of the ten animated avatars into the project. We needed to add more animations in order to have several options of animations available, when the participants stand at different positions and also to avoid boredom that might result from the same animation repeated several times. Adding these ten animations was a little bit tedious, especially arranging their turning points with appropriate speed, since with out the right speed the avatars look like they are sliding and lose their ability of being realistic.
In addition, we looked at the possibility of replacing these avatars with a scanned mesh of a real person. This would add familiarity to the subjects when they see someone they have already met in the virtual environment. Unfortunately, it does not look like we will have the chance to conduct full scale experiments with outside participants, but we will still be able to conduct a few trials on our selves and others in the lab.