Stereoscopic high dynamic range imaging

Two modern technologies show promise to dramatically increase immersion in virtual environments. Stereoscopic imaging captures two images representing the views of both eyes and allows for better depth perception. High dynamic range (HDR) imaging accurately represents real world lighting as opposed to traditional low dynamic range (LDR) imaging. HDR provides a better contrast and more natural looking scenes. The combination of the two technologies in order to gain advantages of both has been, until now, mostly unexplored due to the current limitations in the imaging pipeline. This thesis reviews both fields, proposes stereoscopic high dynamic range (SHDR) imaging pipeline outlining the challenges that need to be resolved to enable SHDR and focuses on capture and compression aspects of that pipeline. The problems of capturing SHDR images that would potentially require two HDR cameras and introduce ghosting, are mitigated by capturing an HDR and LDR pair and using it to generate SHDR images. A detailed user study compared four different methods of generating SHDR images. Results demonstrated that one of the methods may produce images perceptually indistinguishable from the ground truth. Insights obtained while developing static image operators guided the design of SHDR video techniques. Three methods for generating SHDR video from an HDR-LDR video pair are proposed and compared to the ground truth SHDR videos. Results showed little overall error and identified a method with the least error. Once captured, SHDR content needs to be efficiently compressed. Five SHDR compression methods that are backward compatible are presented. The proposed methods can encode SHDR content to little more than that of a traditional single LDR image (18% larger for one method) and the backward compatibility property encourages early adoption of the format. The work presented in this thesis has introduced and advanced capture and compression methods for the adoption of SHDR imaging. In general, this research paves the way for a novel field of SHDR imaging which should lead to improved and more realistic representation of captured scenes

A comparison between expert and beginner learning for motor skill development in a virtual reality serious game

In order to be used for skill development and skill maintenance, virtual environments require accurate simulation of the physical phenomena involved in the process of the task being trained. The accuracy needs to be conveyed in a multimodal fashion with varying parameterisations still being quantified, and these are a function of task, prior knowledge, sensory efficacy and human perception. Virtual reality (VR) has been integrated from a didactic perspective in many serious games and shown to be effective in the pedological process. This paper interrogates whether didactic processes introduced into a VR serious game, by taking advantage of augmented virtuality to modify game attributes, can be effective for both beginners and experts to a task. The task in question is subjective performance in a clay pigeon shooting simulation. The investigation covers whether modified game attributes influence skill and learning in a complex motor task and also investigates whether this process is applicable to experts as well as beginners to the task. VR offers designers and developers of serious games the ability to provide information in the virtual world in a fashion that is impossible in the real world. This introduces the question of whether this is effective and transfers skill adoption into the real world and also if a-priori knowledge influences the practical nature of this information in the pedagogic process. Analysis is conducted via a between-subjects repeated measure ANOVA using a 2 \backslashtimes 22×2factorial design to address these questions. The results show that the different training provided affects the performance in this task ($$N=57$$N=57). The skill improvement is still evidenced in repeated measures when information and guidance is removed. This effect does not exist under a control condition. Additionally, we separate by an expert and non-expert group to deduce if a-priori knowledge influences the effect of the presented information, it is shown that it does not

Optimal exposure compression for high dynamic range content

High dynamic range (HDR) imaging has become one of the foremost imaging methods capable of capturing and displaying the full range of lighting perceived by the human visual system in the real world. A number of HDR compression methods for both images and video have been developed to handle HDR data, but none of them has yet been adopted as the method of choice. In particular, the backwards-compatible methods that always maintain a stream/image that allow part of the content to be viewed on conventional displays make use of tone mapping operators which were developed to view HDR images on traditional displays. There are a large number of tone mappers, none of which is considered the best as the images produced could be deemed subjective. This work presents an alternative to tone mapping-based HDR content compression by identifying a single exposure that can reproduce the most information from the original HDR image. This single exposure can be adapted to fit within the bit depth of any traditional encoder. Any additional information that may be lost is stored as a residual. Results demonstrate quality is maintained as well, and better, than other traditional methods. Furthermore, the presented method is backwards-compatible, straightforward to implement, fast and does not require choosing tone mappers or settings

Bespoke high-fidelity visualization of tiling

This paper describes the development and validation of a new service allowing products, such as tiles, to be viewed on a computer authentically in the actual lighting conditions of the area in which they are to be installed. This service leverages recent developments in physically based global illumination and High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging, enabling real-world lighting to be accurately captured, transferred to a computer and used to relight any choice of tile in a highly realistic manner.This project is funded by TSB ICT for Manufacturing and Construction project 14345-87267. The project is also partially supported by ICT COST Action IC1005. L. P. Santos is partially funded through the FCT (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) within project PEst-OE/EEI/UI0752/2011

A High-Fidelity Virtual Environment for the Study of Paranoia

Psychotic disorders carry social and economic costs for sufferers and society. Recent evidence highlights the risk posed by urban upbringing and social deprivation in the genesis of paranoia and psychosis. Evidence based psychological interventions are often not offered because of a lack of therapists. Virtual reality (VR) environments have been used to treat mental health problems. VR may be a way of understanding the aetiological processes in psychosis and increasing psychotherapeutic resources for its treatment. We developed a high-fidelity virtual reality scenario of an urban street scene to test the hypothesis that virtual urban exposure is able to generate paranoia to a comparable or greater extent than scenarios using indoor scenes. Participants ( = 32) entered the VR scenario for four minutes, after which time their degree of paranoid ideation was assessed. We demonstrated that the virtual reality scenario was able to elicit paranoia in a nonclinical, healthy group and that an urban scene was more likely to lead to higher levels of paranoia than a virtual indoor environment. We suggest that this study offers evidence to support the role of exposure to factors in the urban environment in the genesis and maintenance of psychotic experiences and symptoms. The realistic high-fidelity street scene scenario may offer a useful tool for therapists

Enabling stereoscopic high dynamic range video

Stereoscopic and high dynamic range (HDR) imaging are two methods that enhance video content by respectively improving depth perception and light representation. A large body of research has looked into each of these technologies independently, but very little work has attempted to combine them due to limitations in capture and display; HDR video capture (for a wide range of exposure values over 20 f-stops) is not yet commercially available and few prototype HDR video cameras exist. In this work we propose techniques which facilitate stereoscopic high dynamic range (SHDR) video capture by using an HDR and LDR camera pair. Three methods are proposed: one based on generating the missing HDR frame by warping the existing one using a disparity map; increasing the range of LDR video using a novel expansion operator; and a hybrid of the two where expansion is used for pixels within the LDR range and warping for the rest. Generated videos were compared to the ground truth SHDR video captured using two HDR video cameras. Results show little overall error and demonstrate that the hybrid method produces the least error of the presented methods

A high-fidelity virtual environment for the study of paranoia

Psychotic disorders carry social and economic costs for sufferers and society. Recent evidence highlights the risk posed by urban upbringing and social deprivation in the genesis of paranoia and psychosis. Evidence based psychological interventions are often not offered because of a lack of therapists. Virtual reality (VR) environments have been used to treat mental health problems. VR may be a way of understanding the aetiological processes in psychosis and increasing psychotherapeutic resources for its treatment. We developed a high-fidelity virtual reality scenario of an urban street scene to test the hypothesis that virtual urban exposure is able to generate paranoia to a comparable or greater extent than scenarios using indoor scenes. Participants (η = 32) entered the VR scenario for four minutes, after which time their degree of paranoid ideation was assessed. We demonstrated that the virtual reality scenario was able to elicit paranoia in a nonclinical, healthy group and that an urban scene was more likely to lead to higher levels of paranoia than a virtual indoor environment. We suggest that this study offers evidence to support the role of exposure to factors in the urban environment in the genesis and maintenance of psychotic experiences and symptoms. The realistic high-fidelity street scene scenario may offer a useful tool for therapists

Interactive highly realistic virtual reality as a tool for understanding the genesis and treatment of psychotic symptoms

Schizophrenia can be a devastating lifelong psychotic disorder with a poor prognosis. National guidelines in the UK recommend the provision of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to all those suffering with psychotic disorders, but there is a lack of trained therapists in the UK able to provide such a treatment. Developing high quality automated technologies that can serve as an adjunct to conventional CBT should enhance the provision of this therapy, and increase the efficiency of the therapists in practice. The latter will occur by enabling alternate professionals to aid in the delivery of therapy, to enable behavioral experiments to be conducted in the clinic, and for sessions to be recorded and re-played such that the patient can deliver therapy to him or herself. As such the system will enable patients to become experts in, and providers of, their own treatment and decrease the number of sessions needed to be led by a trained CBT therapist. A key feature of any such system is the level of realism required to ensure a compelling session in which the user is not adversely affected by the system itself. This paper presents a high-fidelity virtual environment to help better understand the environmental triggers for psychosis