Designing Multi-projector VR Systems: From Bits to Bolts

Proceedings of the 2005 international conference on Augmented tele-existence - ICAT '05, 2005

We propose a VR content platform for multi-projection displays. Our platform has in common features with frame synchronization methods without any special hardware and real-time image adjustment mechanism with graphics processing units.

2012 IEEE Virtual Reality (VR), 2012

Immersive 3D Virtual Environments (VE) have become affordable for many research centers. However, a complete solution needs several integration steps to be fully operational. Some of these steps are difficult to accomplish and require an uncommon combination of different skills. This tutorial presents the most recent techniques developed to address this problem, from displays to software tools. The hardware in a typical VR installations combines projectors, screens, speakers, computers, tracking and I/O devices. The tutorial will discuss hardware options, explaining their advantages and disadvantages. We will cover design decisions from basic software and hardware design, through user tracking, multimodal human-computer interfaces and acoustic rendering, to how to administrate the whole solution. Additionally, we will provide an introduction to existing tracking technologies, explaining how the most common devices work, while focusing on infrared optical tracking. Finally, we briefly cover integration software and middleware developed for most VE settings.

2006

As the interest of the public for new forms of media grows, museums and theme parks select real time Virtual Reality productions as their presentation medium. Based on threedimensional graphics, interaction, sound, music and intense story telling they mesmerize their audiences. The Foundation of the Hellenic World (FHW) having opened so far to the public three different Virtual Reality theaters, is in the process of building a new Dome-shaped Virtual Reality theatre with a capacity of 130 people. This fully interactive theatre will present new experiences in immersion to the visitors. In this paper we present the challenges encountered in developing productions for such a large spherical display system as well as building the underlying realtime display and support systems. Figure 1. A dome VR theater (FHW).

Storage and Retrieval for Image and Video Databases, 2002

This paper describes the construction of a single screen, projection-based VR display using commodity, or otherwise low-cost components. The display is based on Linus PCs, and uses polarized stereo. Our aim is to create a system that is accessible to the many museums and schools that do not have large budgets for exploring new technology. In constructing this system we

2010

We present a system for dynamic projection on large, human-scale, moving projection screens and demonstrate this system for immersive visualization applications in several fields. We have designed and implemented efficient, low-cost methods for robust tracking of projection surfaces, and a method to provide high frame rate output for computationally-intensive, low frame rate applications. We present a distributed rendering environment which allows many projectors to work together to illuminate the projection surfaces. This physically immersive visualization environment promotes innovation and creativity in design and analysis applications and facilitates exploration of alternative visualization styles and modes. The system provides for multiple participants to interact in a shared environment in a natural manner. Our new human-scale user interface is intuitive and novice users require essentially no instruction to operate the visualization.

With the recent introduction of low cost head mounted displays (HMDs), prices of HMD-based virtual reality setups dropped considerably. In various application areas personal head mounted displays can be utilized for groups of users to deliver different context sensitive information to individual users. We present a hardware setup that allows attaching 12 or more HMDs to a single PC. Finally we demonstrate how a collaborative, educational, augmented reality application is used by six students wearing HMDs on a single PC simultaneously with interactive framerates.

Electronic Imaging, 2019

One of the main shortcomings of most Virtual Reality display systems, be it head-mounted displays or projection based systems like CAVEs, is that they can only provide the correct perspective to a single user. This is a significant limitation that reduces the applicability of Virtual Reality approaches for most kinds of group collaborative work, which is becoming more and more important in many disciplines. Different approaches have been tried to present multiple images to different users at the same time, like optical barriers, optical filtering, optical routing, time multiplex, volumetric displays and lightfield displays among others. This paper describes, discusses and compares different approaches that have been developed and develop an evaluation approach to identify the most promising one for different usage scenarios.

10th Pacific Conference on Computer Graphics and Applications, 2002. Proceedings., 2002

We present the i-Cone TM : a new projection-based panoramic display system for virtual environments. The i-Cone TM uses conical screen geometry, resulting in optimized projector placement to create an extended workspace for standing participants in a front projection curved screen display with a very large continuous field of view. Improved acoustical properties of the conical screen geometry enable the use of immersive spatial audio. Combined with the excellent visual quality and homogeneity of a curved screen display, these properties make the i-Cone TM an attractive display system for immersive virtual environments, suitable for larger audiences. Interaction paradigms and application examples for this new immersive display system are presented.

Proceedings of the 2004 ACM SIGGRAPH international conference on Virtual Reality continuum and its applications in industry - VRCAI '04, 2004

This paper explores the possibilities of using portable devices in multiprojection environments, such as CAVEs, Panoramas and Power Walls. We propose and implement a tool to generate graphical interfaces in a straightforward manner. These interfaces are light and can be run on PDAs. The interface application communicates transparently with a graphic cluster, via any underlying network system, which processes the events and maintains the synchrony of the rendered images in real-time. This tool is part of Glass, a library for distributed computing. We present two examples of applications: Cathedral and Celestia.