Welcome to 14:332:476 Virtual Reality Spring 2008 Grigore C. Burdea Ph.D. Director, Human–Machine Interface Laboratory, CAIP Center, Rutgers University. Electrical and Computer Engineering Department

Class web site: Textbook site:

Grading Criteria (476): Quizzes 10%, Midterm 45% Final 45% Laboratory assignments graded separately (for 478)

Textbook: Burdea and Coiffet, Virtual Reality Technology, 2 nd Edition, Wiley, 2003

Textbook web site:

Laboratory Hardware

Introduction

What is Virtual Reality?

It is not augmented reality…. Introduction

What is Virtual Reality? “A high-end user-computer interface that involves real-time simulation and interaction through multiple sensorial channels.” (vision, sound, touch, smell, taste)” Introduction

Sensorama Simulator, US Patent #3,050,870, 1962 Introduction

VR Short History Ivan Sutherland's doctoral theses: SKETCHPAD: stereo HMD, position tracking, and a graphics engine Tom Furness: display systems for pilots; Brooks developed force feedback GROPE system;

Ivan Sutherland’s HMD (1966+) Introduction

Brooks’s Grope Project (1977) Introduction

VR Short History 1977 Sandin and Sayre invent a bend-sensing glove 1979 Raab et al: Polhemus tracking system 1989 Jaron Lanier (VPL) coins the term virtual reality 1994 VR Society formed

The first complete system was developed by NASA “Virtual Visual Environmental Display” (VIVED early 80s; they prototyped the LCD HMD; Became “Virtual Interface Environment Workstation” (VIEW) 1989 Introduction NASA … a pioneer in VR

NASA VIEW system (1989) Introduction

NASA VIEW system (1992) Introduction

Large simulation and training needs; Could not send humans to other planets; Relatively small budgets. Introduction Why NASA?

Towards Commercialization… The first commercial VR systems appeared in the late 80s produced by VPL Co. (California): The VPL “Data Glove” and The VPL “Eye Phone” HMD Introduction

The VPL DataGlove (1987) cost $8,500 Introduction

The Matel PowerGlove (1989) Introduction

The first commercial VR glove for entertainment – Mattel Power Glove $50 (1989)

The Flight Helmet (ca. 1990) weighs 5 lbs Early HMDs were massive

…and had poor resolution

Virtual Reality in the early 90s…. Emergence of first commercial Toolkits: WorldToolKit (Sense8 Co.); VCToolkit (Division Ltd., UK); Virtual Reality Toolkit VRT3 (Dimension Ltd./Superscape, UK); Cyberspace Developer Kit (Autodesk) Introduction

Superscape VRT3 Development System

Virtual Reality in the early 90s…. Emergence of first non-commercial toolkits: Rend386; Later Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML 1.0); Later still Java and Java 3D; Introduction

Scene created with Rend386 Successor is AVRIL ("A Virtual Reality Interface Library“) C library for creating Created at U. Waterloo, Canada ece.uwaterloo.ca/~broehl/avril.html

Virtual Reality in the early 90s…. PC boards still very slow (7,000 – 35,000 polygons/sec); First turnkey VR system – Provision 100 (Division Ltd.) Emergence of faster graphics rendering architectures at UNC Chapel Hill: “Pixel Planes”; Later “Pixel Flow”; Introduction

Stride PC graphics accelerator 35,000 polygons/sec; $26,000 (with two co- processors)/card Require up to 6 PC slots for stereo version

Introduction Provision 100 VR turnkey system (Division Ltd., UK) 35,000 polygons/sec; $64,000 (including texture generator, tracker, 3-D audio, HMD and software)

Introduction Provision 100 VR turnkey system (Division Ltd., UK)

Introduction Pixel Planes 5 VR system (UNC) ~ 1 Million triangles/sec;

Rendering speed comparison SGI vs. PCs xBox Million poly/sec 2005

Laboratory VR Station prices (2002) PRODUCT Price/user% of Budget PC 1.7 GHz FireGL 2 accelerator 2,34748 Polhemus 3D tracker 4 receivers 1, DT sensing glove five-sensor version Stereo Glasses wired1793 Force feedback Joystick882 Java and Java3D-- VRML-- Total4,919100

VR Market growth

The key elements of a VR System