Computational immersive displays

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2013.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 77-79).Immersion is an oft-quoted but ill-defined term used to describe a viewer or participant's sense of engagement with a visual display system or participatory media. Traditionally, advances in immersive quality came at the high price of ever-escalating hardware requirements and computational budgets. But what if one could increase a participant's sense of immersion, instead, by taking advantage of perceptual cues, neuroprocessing, and emotional engagement while adding only a small, yet distinctly targeted, set of advancements to the display hardware? This thesis describes three systems that introduce small amounts of computation to the visual display of information in order to increase the viewer's sense of immersion and participation. It also describes the types of content used to evaluate the systems, as well as the results and conclusions gained from small user studies. The first system, Infinity-by-Nine, takes advantage of the dropoff in peripheral visual acuity to surround the viewer with an extended lightfield generated in realtime from existing video content. The system analyzes an input video stream and outpaints a low-resolution, pattern-matched lightfield that simulates a fully immersive environment in a computationally efficient way. The second system, the Narratarium, is a context-aware projector that applies pattern recognition and natural language processing to an input such as an audio stream or electronic text to generate images, colors, and textures appropriate to the narrative or emotional content. The system outputs interactive illustrations and audio projected into spaces such as children's rooms, retail settings, or entertainment venues. The final system, the 3D Telepresence Chair, combines a 19th-century stage illusion known as Pepper's Ghost with an array of micro projectors and a holographic diffuser to create an autostereoscopic representation of a remote subject with full horizontal parallax. The 3D Telepresence Chair is a portable, self-contained apparatus meant to enhance the experience of teleconferencing.by Daniel E. Novy.S.M

Programmable synthetic hallucinations : towards a boundless mixed reality

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2019Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. "June 2019." Vita.Includes bibliographical references (pages 118-122).Programmable Synthetic Hallucinations describe the utilization of the bio-physiological mechanics of hallucination generated in the human brain to display virtual information directly in the visual field. Science fiction films, television shows, and video games have trained audiences to think of holograms as luminous volumetric images that float registered in the viewer's 3D space and require no special glasses or optics to see or interact with them. The ability of users to interact with a floating aerial lightfield without the use of face-worn binocular optics is a difficult challenge and one in which a hallucinatory experience offers a solution. While we do not have the ability to activate individual neurons to recreate an neuro-electrical pattern indiscernible from the perception of reality, this dissertation shows that creating phosphenes within the visual field via the magnetic stimulation of neurons in the visual cortex is a viable first step.By electrically stimulating the cells in the hypercolumns of V1, one can induce the perception of a pixel of light within the visual field of a user. These magnetophosphenes are visual perceptions described as luminous shapes, which can be created by time-varying magnetic fields. These change the membrane potential and trigger an action potential directly in neurons of the visual cortex. Previous TMS studies have shown evocation of phosphenes in a binary manner, with subjects reporting the presence or absence of a phosphene but not targeted to a specific location. However, to date, no information or example has been found indicating the use of cortical phosphenes, induced magnetically or otherwise, in performance or public display. Presently, commercial transcranial magnetic stimulators can only be focused to an area approaching one square centimeter, a single output channel, and require manual placement of the coil apparatus.Novel coil designs became a central focus of this research. Further work increased the number of output channels, embedding them in a wearable apparatus with a multichannel array of induction coils. Clinical trials were undertaken at MIT's Clinical Research Center. We were able to evoke visual phenomena in 11 out of 16 test subjects in a known, targeted location. The induced magnetophosphenes were noted above the noise floor of naturally occurring retinal phosphenes and were statistically verified to be a result of the system being tested.by Daniel Edward Novy.Ph. D.Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Science

Hyperon signatures in the PANDA experiment at FAIR

We present a detailed simulation study of the signatures from the sequential decays of the triple-strange pbar p -> Ω+Ω- -> K+ΛbarK- Λ -> K+pbarπ+K-pπ- process in the PANDA central tracking system with focus on hit patterns and precise time measurement. We present a systematic approach for studying physics channels at the detector level and develop input criteria for tracking algorithms and trigger lines. Finally, we study the beam momentum dependence on the reconstruction efficiency for the PANDA detector