Johannes Schirm

Welcome to my profile at the Max-Planck-Institute in Tübingen!

At the moment, I'm here as a research assistant for ten hours per week while in parallel working on my bachelor's thesis for my studies of media and communication informatics at Reutlingen University. I'm a member of Betty's research group, investigating space and body perception at the department lead by Prof. Heinrich Bülthoff.
My task is to help where my help is needed: Most of the time, I'm implementing and programming virtual reality scenarios in common game engines for other group members planning a novel experiment for their research.

Regarding my field of interest, I'm really enthusiastic about computer science, not only in common but especially in combination with media, design, games, film and music. My opinion is that Reutlingen University offers a great course of studies if one's interested in all that. I'm very glad to be a member here at the MPI and it's great to see so many other fields of research and learn new things!

I like to summarize interesting projects on my website, so feel free to have a look at whatever you're interested in! Sadly, my website is only available in German at the moment...

Scientific projects at the MPI:

• [Bachelor's thesis] Intensive work with the body model to analyze and improve personalized self-avatars in virtual reality.

• [Application for the whole group] This application written in C# called QuestionnaireX can read in files that contain questionnaires and present them to the participant. It has been made highly extendable, so everyone can insert new types of questions as a Windows Form without great effort.

• [Experiment for Anne Thaler] As an alternative to the staircase method, this study uses 2AFC to investigate reactions to a change in BMI.

• [Experiments for Albert van der Veer] Further development of already existing experiment code for finding out more about self-location in space.

• [Experiment for Betty Mohler] Stylized characters inverse kinematics HMD study: Adjusting a characters strength of stylization in VR using Oculus Rift.

• [Experiment for Michael Geuss] Quick heigth change study that lets the participant experience different levels of height (for a precisely determined time each) in VR using Oculus Rift.

• [Experiment for Michael Geuss] Affordance study with objects on a table and modified arm length in VR using Oculus Rift. The participant's arm will be tracked and therefore move in VR, as well.

• Visualization of the results from staircase experiments in Unity with a dynamic amount of staircases.

• [Experiment for Anne Thaler] Just-noticeable difference study which makes use of the realistic body morpher and includes the staircase method to investigate reactions to a change in BMI.

Selected personal projects for fun:

• : Performing great titles from games and films from which I'm a huge fan of...

• Developing my own Point-and-Click adventure game for Adobe Flash, inspired by the awesome 'Professor Layton' series.

• Constructing an electric camera dolly on a wooden rail. It can be controlled by the 'Touchberry Terminal', which is my combination of a Raspberry Pi and a touch screen.