What are Virtual Environments? Angela McCarthy CP5080, SP1 2010

Overview ►Paper Insight ►Author ►What is a Virtual Environment? ►Why are Virtual Environments useful? ►How are Virtual Environments made? ►Availability ►Telepresence ►Research ►Conclusion ►Metadata ►Discussion

Paper Insight ►Published in IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications o Volume 14, Issue 1 ►January, 1994 ►Author: Stephen R. Ellis

Author ►Stephen R. Ellis ►Publication Years: ►Publications (ACM): 54 ►On paper, mention that Ellis is from NASA Ames Research Center ►History of working with: o University of California o Lucent Technologies o NASA

What is a VE? ►Virtual Environments (VE) are interactive, computer-graphics based, head-mounted displays ►Illusion of creating space o Sensors – head-mounted display o Effectors – stereoscopic display o Special Purpose Hardware – links sensors to effectors using a simulation computer

Why are VE useful? ►Applications o Education o Training o Teleoperation o Remote Planetary Surface Exploration o Scientific Visualisation

How are VE made? ►Works by developing a real-time, interactive, personal simulation of the content ►Compared to vehicle simulation (origins) environment simulation is unmediated o Hardware worn, not entered

Availability? ►At time, commercially available as flight simulators (e.g. CAE fiberoptic helmet mounted display) ►Achievement of implementation expensive, costs millions of dollars o Only recently, cheaper VE systems become available ►Poor performance partially responsible for fall of former market, VPL Research

Telepresence ►Why have the related applications in telepresence not caught on? o Both use head-referenced/mounted displays o Most likely due to cost and performance characterics of the human interface

Research ►Author comments that a missing element of the application areas is a comparison of user performance o Mentions panel mounted hardware formats with higher resolutions o VE developers complain systems not ready for testing Many do not display recommended number of scan lines

Conclusion ►Flight Simulations o Extended use produces nausea and altered visual and visumotor coordination ►Life in virtual environments o May have social after-effects E.g. Violence in video games, transferred into this medium o Design of virtual environments may provide technical, social and possibly political challenges as well

Metadata ►Large amount of references o Interesting, considering time (comparison to other papers at the time) o References mostly ‘recent’, several older references (eg, 1960’s) ►Diagrams/Images help to illustrate authors points o ie, when explaining head-mounted displays ►Only one author

Discussion ►Reasons o Wanted to look at ‘history’ of VE ►Conclusion o Odd conclusion, doesn’t give the user much to end with apart from an explanation of what a VE is Could have talked in depth about future development and applications

Questions? Thanks for listening!