Stefanos Koutsoutos

Content Based SLAs in Cloud Computing Environments

In this paper, we address the problem of managing SLAs in cloud computing environments. The idea is to take advantage of the content terms that concern the objects and support more efficient capabilities, such as quicker search and retrieval of the objects. As a result, the operational cost is reduced and consequently this fact lessens the customers charge.

A Monitoring Mechanism for Storage Clouds

Managing a Cloud is a difficult task that calls for the deployment and co-operation of many different decision making mechanisms. What all of them have in common is that they need accurate monitoring information to effectively make decisions. Therefore, the deployment of a reliable monitoring mechanism is of paramount importance in the Cloud ecosystem. Guaranteeing Quality of Service coupled with the large scale and distributed nature of Clouds further amplify the need for an effective and light-weight monitoring solution. In this paper we present the architectural design and implementation of the monitoring solution designed within the context of the VISION Cloud project. Our aim is to provide a scalable solution that is able to meet the needs of a large scale Storage Cloud.

Cultural Heritage Experience with Virtual Reality According to User Preferences

—In this paper, we present the VREditor, an easy-to-use authoring tool for annotating a scene with augmented reality features (images, videos, animations, sounds, and texts). The output of this editor is the creation of an augmented reality world. The user lives in this generated virtual world and he can choose according to his preferences (for instance, artistic, political, cultural, military data, etc.), which augmented reality features he desires to be presented to him, having as a result to live an immersive experience virtually.

A Notation Based Approach to Film Pre-vis

This paper describes ANSWER which is a new approach to the creative process of film production. It is based on a symbolic notation system called Director Notation (DN) through which film directors are free to express their creative intent much like a music composer uses musical notation. The notation populates a semantic model which is machine processable and this input is automatically converted into a lightweight 3D pre-vis. ANSWER is integrated with DFT BONES Dailies, so that in post-production editors can quickly synchronise and compare pre-vised and actual footage. In this paper we will describe the various software tools which have been developed as part of the ANSWER project to achieve this goal.

Vivid Educational Experience with Virtual Reality

In this paper, we present an educational system that represents cultural heritage virtually. The system contains an editor for specifying the educational scripts which will be displayed at Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality. The editor is a very simple application interface for Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality developers. It is a useful and easy-to-use tool for editing educational scripts for augmented reality and for exporting X3D files from the developer’s input. The X3D files permit the generation of the augmented reality world. Augmented and Mixed reality permit real and virtual world to be combined. This interaction is done in real-time. The editor enables developers to facilitate their work,that is creating educational scripts of augmented reality. A web service requests a) the localization of the user that is found by the device (PDA) which the user utilizes and b) the user preferences that desires to get informed (political data, cultural data etc). After these data are specified, the web service provides information and scenarios to the user according to his preferences and to the sight where the user is located (found according to his location). The user can interact with these scenarios, living historical immersive experiences virtually.