James Bernard - Engineering and IPT

James Bernard reviewed several of the engineering projects that Iowa State University is undertaking using their SSVR system from MaechDyne. The main project is sponsered by John Deere and appears to mimic the Caterpillar work here at NCSA.

The exciting news was the construction of a new facility under construction on the Iowa State campus for the Iowa Center for Emerging Manufacturing Technology (ICEMT). This facility will house new labs for developing applications and showcase a 6 walled Cave-like structure, which will be a centerpiec of the buildings foyer. The construction will be house in a 3 story sculptural/architectural form which will be used to display the applications created by the center to a larger audience.

In an interesting conversation with James Bernard, he expressed dismay that they had chosen to partner with Cornell in the Supercomputing Center race instead of the NCSA Alliance. We (NCSA) should extend an olive branch to Iowa State an include them into the Alliance for 2 reasons; hardware and software.

• Their state of the art visualization facilities would enhance the Alliance community and add to the visualization hardware resources
• Projection Based VR seems to be spliting into 2 camps, the CAVE people and the Fraunhofer/GMD people. By incorporating Iowa State into the Alliance we will be able to use software resources developed by both groups, which will enhance our abilities to develop visualization applications.

Hans-Jorg Bullinger - Perception in Different IPT-Systems

Hans-Jorg Bullinger gave a very concise account of perception in using various virtual reality display systems.

notes from the speech:

Virtual prototyping; perception of
the product, quality of the product,
definition of the geometry, design/evaluate.

Perception of systems (4 dimensions);
environment, person, process and product.

Perceptions influence the innovation

needs; compromise between polygons
(complexity) and frame rate, 3d user
interfaces, interface design criteria

Vision, audition, kinesthesis, acceleration,
mechanical vibration. Of the 5 humans are only
better than machines in vision.

based on multi-criteria, the Boom satisfies
the most. However. in context supported
estimation experiments the CAVE outscored
all others by a wide margin

conclusions: perception affects quality,
time and costs, need for display improvements,
untill then interface design is the primary focus

Micheal Deering - The Limits of Human Vision

Micheal Deering gave an impressive presentation using Java3D. The glitz of the presentation contributed to the interesting content of describing the limits of human vision and how different display systems mapped themselves onto our retina.

The talk proved that CAVE systems fully immerse the retina of the eye. The second best mapping was his personal monitor on his office desktop which equaled that of an Imax theater screen.

Kevin Arthur - Designing and Building the PIT

Dr. Vali Lalioti - Towards Immersive Telepresence

Kurt Hoffmeister - Large Screen VR display Systems

Kurt Hoffmeister described the components of the MechDyne SSVR system which everyone already knows about. This also sparked the repeated viewing of a SSVR system which became somewhat nauseating. In a refreshing comical way Dave Pape opened his panel speech with an image of the CAVE. I almost clapped.

Christoph Ramshorn - The PanoramBench

Christoph Ramshorn reviewed the visualization needs of Schlumberger and displayed some very beautiful images created by these visualizations. Their needs require a viewing are in which they can look down and also peresent to large crowds. Their PanormaBench is an illustration of a 3x1 wall with a bench in the middle. This format basically supports my feeling that a 3x1 wall coupled with a 3x1 floor would be the ideal format for working and presenting to a large audience.

Ed Lantz - Large Scale Immersive Displays in Entertainment and Education

Ed Lantz presented their products for, as the title states, Large Scale Immersive Displays in Entertainment and Education.

Francesco Gardin - The 3Desk etc.

This advertisement showed off the Italian made 3Desk, which is a spinoff of the Barco Baron. It is also supported by Barco, so it's a mystery why they would create another product to compete with their own - unless they are more interested in selling Barco projectors than Barons, which is probably the case.

Matthias Unbescheiden - Evaluation of VR Technology

Matthias Unbescheiden gave a very interesting speech regarding the applications using 3 siede and 5 sided Cave-like systems. The bottom line is that for engineering processes the 1:1 ratio is what all the manufacturers want. Major uses for the environments are; digital prototyping, design review, functional analysis, evaluation and the assembly/disassembly process.

They have created a 5 walled CAVE using 30mm thick acrylic which reportedly has a 16mm bend with 10 people in the center. This was revolutionary news to Michitaka Hirose from University of Tokyo, to whom I was talking at the dinner reception with Gary Lindahl about their plans for a 6 walled Cave. Currently, the CABIN has a glass floor of approximately the same thickness made of tempered glass. Tempered glass is stronger than the acrylic yet that can only accomodate 3 people at a time. Some research may be needed on this and Peter Evans an intern architect of Brooks Borg Skiles would be very iterested in the results. Brooks Borg Skiles is designing the 6 walled Cave at Iowa State University.

Michitaka Hirose offered that a layer of acrylic and tempered glass may be the best solution.

Daniel Heath - Virtual User Interface

Daniel Heath presented a series of windowed interfaces for operating in the Virtual Environment. This, to me, was totally infuriating. Strong words, but I am no fan of conventional window design. Here we have a system which has finally achieved a defenestrated display and then along comes immature design incorporating a 3D window-based interface. The most interesting VR interfaces I have seen to date have been applied by Marcus Thiebaux in his Virtual Director. Though the Virtual Director interface could use some streamlining the concept is solid. By incorporating 2 dimensional graphic text and lines printed right to the screen surface one can achieve workable menuing and data feedback mechanisms which appear augmented to the virtual world. The problems with manipulating tiny buttons floating in a virtual world are eliminated. The problems with visualizing small text in stereo are eliminated.

The augmmentation of data on the virtual world has been visualized in science fiction movies for several years. This design has been thought out by professional artists and should be emulated. There is a place for 3 dimensional widgets, but the examples set forth in this presentation are far from exemplary.

Andrew Forsberg - ErgoDesk

Andrew Forsberg presented an application which runs on the ActiveDesk. The softwares allows the user to create CAD like models and switch to a stereo mode for quick analysis. Though the ActiveDesk provides a very limited immersive experience the concept of switching into an interactive stereo mode was very interesting.

Rudy Darken - Display Technologies and Immersion

Rudy Darken presented on the need to analyse the needs of the users of these VR systems. Most importantly, he emphasised that any research, even research which produced negative data or data which does not support a given thesis should be documented and examine. At this stage of the game all data is useful when examining usefulness of one VR system over another.

Laura Nelson - XGobi vs. C2

Laura Nelson examined the differences in analyzing statistical data in a CAVE versus a workstation display. It was interesting how the stereoscopic display of the C2 system really added a dimensionality to the data, allowing for quick recognition of data clusters.

Most important, however, was the rare implementation of statistical data into a CAVE environment.

Linda Jacobson - Scalable Reality

Linda Jacobson delivered a very positive announcement regarding Silicon Graphics' direction for hardware and software. For hardware, SGI will be introducing the a new IRplus which will be as big a change as it was from RE graphics to IR graphics. Also, an SGI/NT box will be available soon. For software, SGI will be joining forces with Microsoft to deliver "Farenheight". Though it will not be available in it's entirety for about 2 years, bit's and pieces will be made available when ready. OpenGL, the predecesor, of this new software, will still be supported by SGI. This was repeated several times in the presentation.

Dirk Rantzau - COVISE in the CUBE

Dirk Rantzau presented the VR system at the University of Stuttgart called the CUBE and the software they use COVISE. The presentation did not convey the fact that this is very viable software. Having seen COVISE demonstrated on the floor at SC97, I was familiar with the examples presented. It would have been interesting to see this application demonstrated at the ICEMT lab.

James Gruening - Human in the Loop Vehicle Simulation...

James Gruening presented the Vehicle Simulation applications currently at the ICEMT lab. These John Deere applications are very similar to Caterpillar in look but not in functionality. The John Deere application seemed to be more concerned with trying to simulate dynamics of devices.

Allen Bierbaum - VR Juggler

Allen Bierbaum presented a new VR library in the initial stages of development at the ICEMT lab. VR Juggler is currently only vaporware but it does have some interesting concepts regarding switching devices and displays in mid-application. Though conceptually interesting this library may be behind the curve. Time will tell.

Michitaka Hirose & Tetsuro Ogi - Communication in Networked Immersive Virtual Environments

Tetsuro Ogi gave a very interesting presentation on the research at the University of Tokyo's CABIN (a 5 walled CAVE). The most interesting aspect about this speech was the direction of using stereo video as a virtual world as opposed to rendering a poligonal virtual world. I thought that this was a refreshing view on creating virtual worlds. They are planning to create a 6 walled CAVE soon in Japan.

Marek Czernuszenko - Line of Sight Method for Tracker Calibration

Marek Czernuszenko gave a detailed account of the Line of Sight Method for tracker calibration in a CAVE. Currently this seems to be the only efficient method for calibrating a CAVE. I hope to package this for a CAVERNUS release soon.