Transactions on Edutainment IX

This journal subline serves as a forum for stimulating and disseminating innovative research ideas, theories, emerging technologies, empirical investigations, state-of-the-art methods, and tools in all different genres of edutainment, such as game-based learning and serious games, interactive storytelling, virtual learning environments, VR-based education, and related fields. It covers aspects from educational and game theories, human-computer interaction, computer graphics, artificial intelligence, and systems design. This issue contains a special section on serious games with 8 outstanding contributions from the VS-Games 2011 conference; furthermore, there are 13 regular papers. These contributions clearly demonstrate the use of serious games and virtual worlds for edutainment applications and form a basis for further exploration and new ideas.

The Periodic Table of Elements via an XNA-Powered Serious Game.- Digital Storytelling within Virtual Environments: “The Battle of Thermopylae”.- Games on Prescription! Evaluation of the Elinor Console for Home-Based Stroke Rehabilitation.- An Analysis of the Potential to Utilize Virtual Worlds to Enhance Edutainment and Improve the Wellbeing of the Ageing Population.- Course Lectures as Problem-Based Learning Interventions in Virtual Worlds.- Virtual Customers in a Multiagent Training Application.- Game Based Early Programming Education: The More You Play, the More You Learn.- Story Guided Virtual Environments in Educational Applications.- Rendering Technology of 3D Digital Chinese Ink-Wash Landscape Paintings Based on Maya.- Effects of RPG on Middle School Players’ Intrapersonal Intelligence.- Implementation of Lushan Virtual Digital Plant Museum.- Pedestrian Detection Based on Kernel Discriminative Sparse Representation.- The Design and Implementation of Computer-Aided Chinese Medicated Diet System.- Music-Driven Emotion Model Applied in Digitalized Dance Performance of Sacrificial Ceremony for Confucius.- Real-Time Rendering Framework in the Virtual Home Design System.- Multiple-Cue-Based Visual Object Contour Tracking with Incremental Learning.- Building Virtual Entertainment Environment with Tiled Display Wall and Motion Tracking.- A Calibration Method for Removing the Effect of Infrared Camera Self-radiance on the Accuracy of Temperature Measurement.- Enjoying of Traditional Chinese Shadow Play – A Cross-Culture Study.- A Patch-Based Data Reorganization Method for Coupling Large-Scale Simulations and Parallel Visualization.- The Boom and Bust and Boom of Educational Games.