Viaccess-Orca – VRTogether

Why and how to automatize testing in Unity projects?

Viaccess-Orca — Mon, 23 Nov 2020 07:00:03 +0000

General testing considerations

In every software development it is important to include testing rules in the process. These rules ensure quality and a continuous evolution over new integrated features. For a developer, testing regularly allows more confidence during new implementations – the more developers test their code, the more they will guarantee the quality of it. Of course, this will take them a little while, if they just do it manually.

There are different types of tests depending on the stages of the project.

Unit tests, which induce a step-by-step verification of the developer’s work by themselves. The idea is to verify that each unit (which can represent a function or a class depending on the projects conventions)work as intended. These tests are more numerous and have the narrowest scope of all the tests.
Integration tests. Most applications integrate parts outside of the basic production environment (databases, file systems, network calls to other applications) that are common to dissociate during unit tests. The interactions and links that these parts have with each other are tested during integration testing.
Functional tests, which can be divided into three types:
- The Human-Machine Interface (HMI) tests: the purpose of the HMI tests is to verify that the corporate visual identity has been respected throughout development in two aspects:
  - The visual presentation: menus, display parameters, window properties, icon bars, screen resolution, edge effects, etc.
  - Navigation: means of navigation, shortcuts, the result of moving around on a screen, etc.
- Application tests, which verify security and for example compatibility between different browsers
- Load tests, which scrutinize the project’s performance and robustness.

New implementations in a project are often the vector of instabilities or anomalies, with sometimes unforeseeable consequences. That is the reason why it makes sense to perform non-regression testing, as a type of safety net. Non-regression testing can take a lot of time and effort for teams. In addition, the non-regression test phase is at the end of the chain of all projects carried out in classic or agile mode. This phase is regularly subjected to strong constraints of schedules and budget. This is why it is interesting to automate those tests.

Once operational, tests automation has many advantages:

Time savings, due to a reduction in the workload of the teams.
Increase in productivity.
Reliability and quality of the tests carried out.
Increase of the level of completeness of the tests carried out.
Free teams from repetitive tasks in favour of tasks with greater added value (Analysis of results, definition of test cases, planning, etc.).

Automatic testing in the scope of the VRT project

As part of Work Package 3 (WP3), which focuses on the delivery of specific software and hardware components for the project, the consortium organizes regular testing sessions. Latest development and functional improvements are analysed during meetings called Test fests. Lately, these meetings highlighted the need to automate some integration tests that verify links the different components with a main component which manage all of them: the orchestrator.

These tests are time-consuming if performed by humans and seem very simple to validate via an automatic process. Moreover a solution which can emulate the user’s actions could be used later for HMI tests.

In order to evaluate efficiently testing tools, it is important to follow a precise path:

Know when and how it is possible to automate these tests
Translate the initial need into a test scenario: without interpretation, without forgetting any important features
Execute the tests with rigor and follow the correction of anomalies
Organize the tests according to the means of the company, the size and the complexity of the software First, a functional, UI (focused on the user interface) non regression test will be created.

How to choose the best suitable tools for automatic testing in Unity?

Of course, many test systems exist. The idea is to find the most suitable solution adapted to VRTogether requirements.

Test systems will be evaluated according to the following criteria:

Windows platform
Accordance to the concerned testing type.
Input fields detection on unity
Price: This research will focus on open source projects.
Technical Support and Assistance: Automation engineers sometimes need help on critical problems.

The research for the best system induced naturally the experimentations, and so it makes sense to first create an interface that presents the milestones of the VRTogeter’s usage scenario. It’s a way to identify clearly the testing software’s specificities without confusing on the VRT’s. For the sake of efficiency, a usage scenario reduced to its strict minimum should be created in accordance to a simplified interface made on unity.

The intention is to simulate the behavior of a user who interacts with an interface comprising of a login password section and a registration section with writing areas for the name, email, password and confirmation of the password. During a first test the users will identify themselves with a previously saved profile (it takes the form of a text file at the root of the project), and during a second test the users will create their own account in the register section.

The simplified scenario:

Check that the program is started
Check the existence of the login button
Fill in the login text field with the username
Fill in the password text field with the password
Click on the login button
Verify the interface change

It seemed coherent to us to initially focus our search for an automated test solution working with unity on open source solutions. If the outcome of this research had not been conclusive, our research would have turned towards profitable solutions.

This section will provide an overview of the different test solutions that have been explored. Then a more precise explanation of how AltUnity works and why it was chosen as the most adapted solution follows.

Unity Test Runner

docs.unity3d.com/2017.4/Documentation/Manual/testing-editortestsrunner

Unity Test Runner (UTR) is a tool, now directly integrated into Unity, the tests are written in C # with the nunit library. The checks are done thanks to the assert class; it allows to know if the tests are positive or not.

Of course, there is no limit to the number of possible checks.

The tests can be carried out in “edit mode” from the Unity editor which allows code checks without launching the player and in “play mode” which allows you to see the effects of your test in the unity scene. The tests in play mode add more assemblies during the construction of the project, and therefore increase the size and the build time. Unity test runner is primarily useful for unit testing and possibly for integration testing. Thus, its operation in play mode involves a sort of division of the scene to isolate the fragments of code which are tested. The unity editor can also have different performance depending on the computer used (CPU, GPU, OS …). Automated functional tests must be applied to environments as close as possible to production environments. And this is why the Unity Test Runner is not the most suitable tool.

Selenium

https://www.selenium.dev/

Selenium is “a set of web browser automation tools that uses best available techniques to remotely control browser instances and emulate a user’s interaction with the browser” (Selenium, n.d.). The notoriety of the tool and the big community around it are sufficient reasons to explore Selenium.

Selenium works on a web browser, here the experiment is done with the chrome webdriver. Writing a few lines in Java is made easier by selenium IDE. Automating a functional test on a website therefore does not present any difficulties. Unfortunately, selenium does not have a driver allowing to make the link with the Unity editor or the build of the VRT application. This constraint makes Selenium unsuitable. The Selenium solution finds its equivalent for unity, this one is called Appium.

Appium

http://appium.io/

Appium was developed by Dan Cuellar in August 2012, it is actually written in node.js. Appium works with IOS, Android and theoretically Desktop applications. Starting a game with Appium does not pose any difficulties, but identifying the elements of the scene and creating interactions presents a sticking point. These concerns can be resolved with an image recognition system using the open CV library as raised by Ru Cindrela – engineer at Altom- during her conference on Appium given in 2018. VRT’s requirements lead to find a standalone solution that can identify unity objects separately from each other. Appium is therefore ruled out.

Unium

https://github.com/gwaredd/unium

Unium gives a flexible interface that allows to remotely control and inspect a game while it is running. While the API Unium offers some very interesting possibilities to inspect game behavior, object coordinates or latency, it is not a stand-alone solution. Its compatibility with Appium circumvents one of the major problems of Appium, the object detection. The association between Unium and Appium is of great interest in the testing of mobile applications.

Unium is available for free on GitHub. This is a library for Unity that allows test verification. Even if it is Appium compatible, it’s important to clarify that this is not an automation tool. It is presented as an HTTP API which can be used by the testing tools. It comes in two parts:

– A web server directly integrated into the game

– A query system that allows you to search and manipulate the elements of the project.

Autoit

https://www.autoitscript.com

Autoit is a high-level programming language allowing to automate the user’s behavior who evolve under a Microsoft Windows OS, it gives a wide choice of function libraries. There is an editor and an Autoit IDE. If in a Windows environment, the tool has no significant limitations, the creation of functional tests for unity presents blocking points.

In the usage scenario Autoit is not able to identify the existence of the login button, but if it has received the coordinates of this one as well as its colour code, it will be able to check if the pixels of the button have the expected colour at the expected moment.

This solution which considers the coordinates of the pixels, their colour and the location of the mouse cursor makes possible to automate the behavior of a user in an environment that Autoit doesn’t know while still maintaining the execution of the scenario. To get some feedbacks, when launching the VRT project, Autoit generates in a separate document a txt file in which the verifications are notified.

Indeed, if the aspect of the project takes a different form or if it’s responsive, the Autoit script must be modified.

From this observation, the research turned to a solution capable of identifying the elements of a Unity project.

AltUnityTester

https://altom.gitlab.io/altunity/altunitytester/

AltUnity tests the ability to identify the objects present in a Unity scene and to create interactions with them. This solution is an alternative to Appium presented by Ru Cindrea at the SeleniumConf in Chicago. (SeleniumConf, 2018) AltUnity Tester is an open source test automation tool developed by the company Altom, it takes the form of a user interface that should precisely help detect objects in a game and interact with them using written tests in C #, Python or Java. These tests can be run on real devices (mobile, PC, etc.) or in the Unity editor. This unity plugin seems to meet expectations because it offers a possibility to check the functioning of the tests in the editor and even to make a build. This particularity seems to us suitable for an evolution for performance tests. In addition, this tool is compatible with Appium (It could be just as effective for phone applications in other innovation projects).

It works through WebSocket server and a client. A connection can be established via an API and an interface in the unity editor.

Solution	Language	Platform	Test type	Compatible with Unity	Open-source	Technical Support and assistance
Unity test runner	C#	All Platform	Unit test	V	V	V
Selenium	JavaScript, C#, python	Web browser : Chrome, Mozilla firefox	Functional test	X	V	V
Appium	C#	iOS, Android	Integration test, functional test	V	V	V
Unium	Appium script	All Platform	X	V	V	X
Autoit	Autoit script	Windows	Functional test	X	V	V
AltUnity tester	C#	IOS, Android, Standalone	Unit test, integration test, functional test.	V	V	V

Alt Unity tester is arguably the most suitable tool for VRT’s demand and could be adapted in a continuous integration chain to improve the end user’s quality of experience. In addition, the tool, which is constantly evolving, adapts to other kinds of platform. For now the consortium keeps a permanent monitoring on the evolution of these solutions.

Come and follow us in this VR journey with i2CAT, CWI, TNO, CERTH, Artanim, Viaccess-Orca, TheMo and Motion Spell.

This project has been funded by the European Commission as part of the H2020 program, under the grant agreement 762111.

The post Why and how to automatize testing in Unity projects? appeared first on VRTogether.

Social VR: staying connected in the time of COVID-19

Viaccess-Orca — Mon, 30 Mar 2020 10:11:16 +0000

While more than a billion people are currently social distancing all over the world to stem the spread of the coronavirus, the Internet remains the only way for the majority of us to maintain a minimum of social connection.

Whether it is to ask after our elders, to ensure educational continuity for our schooled children or to allow us to work remotely, instant messaging services or videoconferencing, made available and usable via the internet, hook us to our previous life. Despite everything, these services are far from bringing an interaction as strong and naturally intuitive as face-to-face.

At this stage, Social Virtual Reality seems to be the most promising technology to overcome this real social distancing.

Sharing a moment with family and friends during social distancing would still be possible

Since March 9th that Italians are cloistered at home, they have gotten into the habit of meeting every evening at 8 p.m. on their balconies, to their windows, to sing, to applaud the medical staff and give them their support. This ritual has since been repeated in France and Spain. Beyond the positive aspect that this can have on the morale of caregivers in these difficult times, it shows that these Italians, Spanish, French people cannot live without social interaction, that the early evening is a privileged moment for conversation and sharing with family, friends, neighbors. Imagine for a moment if, despite the illness and the social distancing, you could still share a family meal, drink a beer at the pub with your friends, go to the movies with your wife. Pilots 1 and 2 of the VRTogether project showed that such interaction between physically distant people was possible within the same virtual space. Not only is it possible but it strongly resembles reality since it is based on a photorealistic representation of people. So you can all be gathered in a superb virtual lounge, share a drink and see your interlocutors as they really are at the moment while moving in this virtual space and around these people.

Online conference and online education, the same issue, interaction with objects is actually missing

Many shows (NAB, WMC,…) have been canceled recently due to the pandemic. No alternative solution has been suggested. Why? Because quite simply the technological means currently available do not allow the same interactions to be reproduced remotely as in face-to-face. Yet, the advantages of being able to offer these conferences remotely are numerous:

No missed flights or international concerns
Travel time (no traffic jams), money and stress saved
Reduction of carbon footprint
Global audience participation regardless of geophysical location

The same problem currently arises for remote education or teleworking. The about 12 million French students are caught off guard and have to deal with Youtube, Discord, Google Drive or Microsoft One Drive, among others, to be able to claim pedagogical continuity. It would be much easier for each teacher obliged to remotely teach and more profitable for each student to be able to meet, students and teacher, in the same immersive environment, a virtual classroom, in which all the teaching materials would be accessible, shareable and editable.

The same is true for the millions of people around the world who are currently teleworking. How do you want to create a strong team atmosphere remotely? Find yourself in a virtual meeting room with a common whiteboard, sticky notes visible to all, with the possibility of projecting and sharing all types of documents while seeing the participants as if they were really next to you, this is key!

This is exactly what VRTogether Pilot 3 offers, not to limit participants with a photorealistic representation in the immersive environment to interact via the gaze and voice but also allow them to use objects as a support for interaction. It is the keystone of Social Virtual Reality.

Our social life: A priority

This sanitary crisis will at least have had the benefit of highlighting the importance we attach to our social life. Linus Torvalds, inventor of the Linux system and Git, and a fervent defender of telework, recently admitted in an article on the internet: “I worried about missing human interaction”.

A report this week on French television showed how impactful social distancing is for top athletes and especially for team sports. In a previous article, we covered the question “How VR can improve athlete performance?” This article takes on its full meaning in the current context and provides answers to these athletes without their sparring partners.

Easter celebrations are coming. In France, the government has prohibited religious entities from gathering people. Social VR solutions are undoubtedly once again the solution in this context.

As a last example, the National Orchestra of Serbia interpreted by videoconference “Bella Ciao” to support Italy, the European country currently most affected by the virus:

The rendering would have been of a completely different nature if this improvised concert had been held in a virtual Opera hall and shared with spectators in total immersion. Coupled with the arrival of 5G, Social VR has undeniable assets to deal with social distancing.

Author: Patrice Angot, Viaccess-Orca

Come and follow us in this VR journey with i2CAT, CWI, TNO, CERTH, Artanim, Viaccess-Orca, Entropy Studio and Motion Spell.

This project has been funded by the European Commission as part of the H2020 program, under the grant agreement 762111.

The post Social VR: staying connected in the time of COVID-19 appeared first on VRTogether.

How VR can improve athlete performance?

Viaccess-Orca — Wed, 15 Jan 2020 09:57:51 +0000

At first glance VR and top-level sports may seem antithetical. VR is practiced in a relatively small space with a relative freedom of movement whereas the high-level athlete needs the opposite to perform. In this article, we will show you, on the contrary, how VR can significantly help improve an athlete’s performance.

Improve your individual technique

A VR environment can be used to significantly improve the individual technique of an athlete. VR allows to break down the technical gesture into sub-skills and thus to participate in adaptive learning and iterative correction of the gesture. A concrete example is the service for a tennis man. At first, the VR environment will focus on the intensity of the ball throwing in the vertical plane. Then, the concept of depth of the throw can be incorporated but without worrying about the grip of the racket. Then, the throwing gesture will be grafted, and so on.In a collective sport, the VR can also participate in the improvement of the individual technique of the athlete. By creating a virtual environment, the repetition of a duel between the real athlete and his virtual opponent will improve his judgment on the kinematic parameters of the opponent. The virtual environment can be configured to draw the athlete’s attention to the opponent’s parameter (s) to be observed in order to make the right decision. The virtual environment can also bring diversity to the duel by alternating, for example, between a right-handed virtual opponent and a left-handed one.

Repeat a collective sequence without any real partner

In the context of a team sport, the VR offers a reproducible and repetitive framework of real situations without mobilizing the whole team. So a goalkeeper in football can easily train alone on situations like corners, free kicks.In the same spirit, VR can allow a newcomer within a collective to quickly get into the game system without the presence of his teammates.

Improve the way you play together

Some situations of play in a team sport may lead two partners of the same team to a disagreement during an interception in a common area. Nobody intervenes thinking that it is the other who will intervene. Worse, the opposite case can lead both partners to collide.VR allows you to learn and play together without the risk of colliding. To improve the automatisms between 2 players, the VR allows 2 real sportsmen to share a same virtual environment but in very distinct physical spaces.

Play the way you train: Really?

Athletes can train at high intensity for as long and as often as they want. The training will never have the same psychological effect on the athlete as when he enters a stadium filled with 40 000 fans. Imagine the stress of the penalty shooter with 40,000 stares on him, the noise of the crowd, the expectation of his partners, the attempts at distraction by the opponent, the instructions of the referee,…Only an immersive VR experience that replicates the situation can lead the athlete to train and control this stress.

Injured player: Infirmary and what else?

During a period of injury, while the body is at rest, the athlete can continue, with the help of the VR, to maintain or even to improve the cognitive capacities associated with his sport through sensory-motor activity available in VR.

What’s next?

VR is already used by many athletes or teams of top athletes to optimize their performance. However, significant technical advances are expected in the coming years to allow a more general adoption of VR in the sporting world.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning should help build more creative and responsive virtual adversaries.
The latency must almost disappear to open the field of possibilities in terms of training sessions.
A photo-realistic representation of the athlete’s body and not an avatar is necessary to go even further in improving the motricity of the athlete.

These technical challenges are essential elements that the VRTogether project tries to answer.

Author: Patrice Angot, Viaccess-Orca

Come and follow us in this VR journey with i2CAT, CWI, TNO, CERTH, Artanim, Viaccess-Orca, Entropy Studio and Motion Spell.

This project has been funded by the European Commission as part of the H2020 program, under the grant agreement 762111.

The post How VR can improve athlete performance? appeared first on VRTogether.

How we’re tackling low-latency challenges

Viaccess-Orca — Thu, 06 Jun 2019 06:00:27 +0000

In order to make VR-Together a truly interactive experience, users need to be able to interact in real-time with the situations they are living, and with other users’ actions. However, given the required amount of data generated by our volumetric representation technology and bandwidth considerations, we need a solution to maintain a low-latency delivery of users’ representation.

That’s why VR-Together uses CMAF (Common Media Application Format), a format designed to offer a common interface for media content and enabling low-latency delivery. CMAF brings reduced storage size requirements on the CDN side, by making the audiovisual data common between HLS and DASH – whether the format used by the player. In our case, we’re using DASH as adaptive streaming format for our player, to ensure a continuous stream and the best quality throughout the whole experience.

The low-latency mode works by breaking the segmented content into chunks of a fixed duration. These chunks can then be published as they are being created and consumed before the audiovisual fragment has been entirely generated. This method results in an average of 1-3 seconds latency instead of 10-30 seconds.

As a content protection and conditional access provider, the key challenge for our contributor Viaccess-Orca in this context of OTT low-latency is the delivery of DRM licenses in a minimum amount of time: switching to an encrypted stream should not add any delay for the user. The DRM solution of VO is compatible with CMAF and optimizes the license’s delivery delay, and thus improves the user’s experience.

For more information about CMAF and OTT Low Latency, you can read the dedicated article on Viaccess-Orca’s website.

Come and follow us in this VR journey with i2CAT, CWI, TNO, CERTH, Artanim, Viaccess-Orca, Entropy Studio and Motion Spell.

This project has been funded by the European Commission as part of the H2020 program, under the grant agreement 762111.

The post How we’re tackling low-latency challenges appeared first on VRTogether.

VRTogether has launched a market research study covering VR trends and technologies

Viaccess-Orca — Thu, 09 Aug 2018 12:12:41 +0000

VRTogether’s members are currently analysing the market to provide a wide vision of the current market and the expected evolution of the immersive audiovisual products. The objectives of this study are t:

Shed light on changing behaviours and associated expectations in audio-visual consumption.
Assess the market potential of the solutions developed within VRTogether group both regarding enhancing existing formats and creating new types of content.
Identify technological trends, similar potential solutions as well as new partners.
Identify the targets (B2C, B2B, …) of the solution and how they could successfully be addressed.

The scope of the study includes the head-mounted displays (HMD), the capture systems, the rendering engines and the VR softwares expected to be used by various industries.

The study provides an estimation of the forecasted revenues, an overview of the current usages, a VR SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and Threats) and the VR applications being used or trialled nowadays in the different industries. With the eruption of virtual reality content, the user experience has been very lonesome. As a consequence, some developers have begun to include a social dimension to their content in various industries: Games, Social Networks, Sports, Music & Arts, Education, Tourism and of course business applications. The VR market remains relatively niche, but a continued moderate growth of the headset adoption is expected over the next few years: hardware prices drop, technology improves and content becomes more appealing.

Furthermore, the VR value chain is presented in the study and the associated technologies are benchmarked to highlight the best suited to the VRTogether project. The analysis will lead to the proposal of a value proposition associated with a best-of-breed ecosystem. The study will also provide the targeted customers (businesses and consumers) and the possible business models.

We will keep you informed of the publication of the document!

Who we are

As a leading global provider of content protection, delivery, and discovery solutions, Viaccess-Orca is shaping the ultimate content experience. VO will contribute to the different WP of the project VRTogether, we will focus on Platform Design and architecture and leads work package 5 on Innovation, Dissemination and exploitation. We will also contribute to the evaluation of the solution compared to market available product.

Come and follow us in this VR journey with i2CAT, CWI, TNO, CERTH, Artanim, Motion Spell, Entropy Studio.

This project has been funded by the European Commission as part of the H2020 program, under the grant agreement 762111.

The post VRTogether has launched a market research study covering VR trends and technologies appeared first on VRTogether.