Exploring Oculus Rift: A Historical Analysis of the ‘Virtual Reality’ Paradigm

This paper will first provide background information about Virtual Reality in order to better analyze its development throughout history and into the future. Next, this essay begins an in-depth historical analysis of how virtual reality has developed prior to 1970, a pivotal year in Virtual Reality history, followed by an exploration of how this development paradigm shifted between the 1970\u27s and the turn of the century. The historical analysis of virtual reality is concluded by covering the modern period from 2000-present. Finally, this paper examines the layout of the virtual reality field in respect to he history and innovations presented

Future Directions in Astronomy Visualisation

Despite the large budgets spent annually on astronomical research equipment such as telescopes, instruments and supercomputers, the general trend is to analyse and view the resulting datasets using small, two-dimensional displays. We report here on alternative advanced image displays, with an emphasis on displays that we have constructed, including stereoscopic projection, multiple projector tiled displays and a digital dome. These displays can provide astronomers with new ways of exploring the terabyte and petabyte datasets that are now regularly being produced from all-sky surveys, high-resolution computer simulations, and Virtual Observatory projects. We also present a summary of the Advanced Image Displays for Astronomy (AIDA) survey which we conducted from March-May 2005, in order to raise some issues pertitent to the current and future level of use of advanced image displays.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in PAS

Design and Development of a Multi-Sided Tabletop Augmented Reality 3D Display Coupled with Remote 3D Imaging Module

This paper proposes a tabletop augmented reality (AR) 3D display paired with a remote 3D image capture setup that can provide three-dimensional AR visualization of remote objects or persons in real-time. The front-side view is presented in stereo-3D format, while the left-side and right-side views are visualized in 2D format. Transparent glass surfaces are used to demonstrate the volumetric 3D augmentation of the captured object. The developed AR display prototype mainly consists of four 40 × 30 cm2 LCD panels, 54% partially reflective glass, an in-house developed housing assembly, and a processing unit. The capture setup consists of four 720p cameras to capture the front-side stereo view and both the left- and right-side views. The real-time remote operation is demonstrated by connecting the display and imaging units through the Internet. Various system characteristics, such as range of viewing angle, stereo crosstalk, polarization perseverance, frame rate, and amount of reflected and transmitted light through partially reflective glass, were examined. The demonstrated system provided 35% optical transparency and less than 4% stereo crosstalk within a viewing angle of ±20 degrees. An average frame rate of 7.5 frames per second was achieved when the resolution per view was 240 × 240 pixels

Design and Development of a Multi-Sided Tabletop Augmented Reality 3D Display Coupled with Remote 3D Imaging Module

This paper proposes a tabletop augmented reality (AR) 3D display paired with a remote 3D image capture setup that can provide three-dimensional AR visualization of remote objects or persons in real-time. The front-side view is presented in stereo-3D format, while the left-side and right-side views are visualized in 2D format. Transparent glass surfaces are used to demonstrate the volumetric 3D augmentation of the captured object. The developed AR display prototype mainly consists of four 40 × 30 cm2 LCD panels, 54% partially reflective glass, an in-house developed housing assembly, and a processing unit. The capture setup consists of four 720p cameras to capture the front-side stereo view and both the left- and right-side views. The real-time remote operation is demonstrated by connecting the display and imaging units through the Internet. Various system characteristics, such as range of viewing angle, stereo crosstalk, polarization perseverance, frame rate, and amount of reflected and transmitted light through partially reflective glass, were examined. The demonstrated system provided 35% optical transparency and less than 4% stereo crosstalk within a viewing angle of ±20 degrees. An average frame rate of 7.5 frames per second was achieved when the resolution per view was 240 × 240 pixels

Novel haptic interface For viewing 3D images

In recent years there has been an explosion of devices and systems capable of displaying stereoscopic 3D images. While these systems provide an improved experience over traditional bidimensional displays they often fall short on user immersion. Usually these systems only improve depth perception by relying on the stereopsis phenomenon. We propose a system that improves the user experience and immersion by having a position dependent rendering of the scene and the ability to touch the scene. This system uses depth maps to represent the geometry of the scene. Depth maps can be easily obtained on the rendering process or can be derived from the binocular-stereo images by calculating their horizontal disparity. This geometry is then used as an input to be rendered in a 3D display, do the haptic rendering calculations and have a position depending render of the scene. The author presents two main contributions. First, since the haptic devices have a finite work space and limited resolution, we used what we call detail mapping algorithms. These algorithms compress geometry information contained in a depth map, by reducing the contrast among pixels, in such a way that it can be rendered into a limited resolution display medium without losing any detail. Second, the unique combination of a depth camera as a motion capturing system, a 3D display and haptic device to enhance user experience. While developing this system we put special attention on the cost and availability of the hardware. We decided to use only off-the-shelf, mass consumer oriented hardware so our experiments can be easily implemented and replicated. As an additional benefit the total cost of the hardware did not exceed the one thousand dollars mark making it affordable for many individuals and institutions

HOLOGRAPHICS: Combining Holograms with Interactive Computer Graphics

Among all imaging techniques that have been invented throughout the last decades, computer graphics is one of the most successful tools today. Many areas in science, entertainment, education, and engineering would be unimaginable without the aid of 2D or 3D computer graphics. The reason for this success story might be its interactivity, which is an important property that is still not provided efficiently by competing technologies – such as holography. While optical holography and digital holography are limited to presenting a non-interactive content, electroholography or computer generated holograms (CGH) facilitate the computer-based generation and display of holograms at interactive rates [2,3,29,30]. Holographic fringes can be computed by either rendering multiple perspective images, then combining them into a stereogram [4], or simulating the optical interference and calculating the interference pattern [5]. Once computed, such a system dynamically visualizes the fringes with a holographic display. Since creating an electrohologram requires processing, transmitting, and storing a massive amount of data, today’s computer technology still sets the limits for electroholography. To overcome some of these performance issues, advanced reduction and compression methods have been developed that create truly interactive electroholograms. Unfortunately, most of these holograms are relatively small, low resolution, and cover only a small color spectrum. However, recent advances in consumer graphics hardware may reveal potential acceleration possibilities that can overcome these limitations [6]. In parallel to the development of computer graphics and despite their non-interactivity, optical and digital holography have created new fields, including interferometry, copy protection, data storage, holographic optical elements, and display holograms. Especially display holography has conquered several application domains. Museum exhibits often use optical holograms because they can present 3D objects with almost no loss in visual quality. In contrast to most stereoscopic or autostereoscopic graphics displays, holographic images can provide all depth cues—perspective, binocular disparity, motion parallax, convergence, and accommodation—and theoretically can be viewed simultaneously from an unlimited number of positions. Displaying artifacts virtually removes the need to build physical replicas of the original objects. In addition, optical holograms can be used to make engineering, medical, dental, archaeological, and other recordings—for teaching, training, experimentation and documentation. Archaeologists, for example, use optical holograms to archive and investigate ancient artifacts [7,8]. Scientists can use hologram copies to perform their research without having access to the original artifacts or settling for inaccurate replicas. Optical holograms can store a massive amount of information on a thin holographic emulsion. This technology can record and reconstruct a 3D scene with almost no loss in quality. Natural color holographic silver halide emulsion with grain sizes of 8nm is today’s state-of-the-art [14]. Today, computer graphics and raster displays offer a megapixel resolution and the interactive rendering of megabytes of data. Optical holograms, however, provide a terapixel resolution and are able to present an information content in the range of terabytes in real-time. Both are dimensions that will not be reached by computer graphics and conventional displays within the next years – even if Moore’s law proves to hold in future. Obviously, one has to make a decision between interactivity and quality when choosing a display technology for a particular application. While some applications require high visual realism and real-time presentation (that cannot be provided by computer graphics), others depend on user interaction (which is not possible with optical and digital holograms). Consequently, holography and computer graphics are being used as tools to solve individual research, engineering, and presentation problems within several domains. Up until today, however, these tools have been applied separately. The intention of the project which is summarized in this chapter is to combine both technologies to create a powerful tool for science, industry and education. This has been referred to as HoloGraphics. Several possibilities have been investigated that allow merging computer generated graphics and holograms [1]. The goal is to combine the advantages of conventional holograms (i.e. extremely high visual quality and realism, support for all depth queues and for multiple observers at no computational cost, space efficiency, etc.) with the advantages of today’s computer graphics capabilities (i.e. interactivity, real-time rendering, simulation and animation, stereoscopic and autostereoscopic presentation, etc.). The results of these investigations are presented in this chapter

An Empirical Evaluation of Visual Cues for 3D Flow Field Perception

Three-dimensional vector fields are common datasets throughout the sciences. They often represent physical phenomena that are largely invisible to us in the real world, like wind patterns and ocean currents. Computer-aided visualization is a powerful tool that can represent data in any way we choose through digital graphics. Visualizing 3D vector fields is inherently difficult due to issues such as visual clutter, self-occlusion, and the difficulty of providing depth cues that adequately support the perception of flow direction in 3D space. Cutting planes are often used to overcome these issues by presenting slices of data that are more cognitively manageable. The existing literature provides many techniques for visualizing the flow through these cutting planes; however, there is a lack of empirical studies focused on the underlying perceptual cues that make popular techniques successful. The most valuable depth cue for the perception of other kinds of 3D data, notably 3D networks and 3D point clouds, is structure-from-motion (also called the Kinetic Depth Effect); another powerful depth cue is stereoscopic viewing, but none of these cues have been fully examined in the context of flow visualization. This dissertation presents a series of quantitative human factors studies that evaluate depth and direction cues in the context of cutting plane glyph designs for exploring and analyzing 3D flow fields. The results of the studies are distilled into a set of design guidelines to improve the effectiveness of 3D flow field visualizations, and those guidelines are implemented as an immersive, interactive 3D flow visualization proof-of-concept application

The matrix revisited: A critical assessment of virtual reality technologies for modeling, simulation, and training

A convergence of affordable hardware, current events, and decades of research have advanced virtual reality (VR) from the research lab into the commercial marketplace. Since its inception in the 1960s, and over the next three decades, the technology was portrayed as a rarely used, high-end novelty for special applications. Despite the high cost, applications have expanded into defense, education, manufacturing, and medicine. The promise of VR for entertainment arose in the early 1990\u27s and by 2016 several consumer VR platforms were released. With VR now accessible in the home and the isolationist lifestyle adopted due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, VR is now viewed as a potential tool to enhance remote education. Drawing upon over 17 years of experience across numerous VR applications, this dissertation examines the optimal use of VR technologies in the areas of visualization, simulation, training, education, art, and entertainment. It will be demonstrated that VR is well suited for education and training applications, with modest advantages in simulation. Using this context, the case is made that VR can play a pivotal role in the future of education and training in a globally connected world