Virtual reality and virtual environments in 10 lectures

The book is based on the material originally developed for the course on Virtual Reality, which the author was teaching at Tampere University of Technology, as well as course on Virtual Environments that the author had prepared for the University for Advancing Studies at Tempe, Arizona. This original purpose has influenced the structure of this book as well as the depth to which we explore the presented concepts. Therefore, our intention in this book is to give an introduction into the important issues regarding a series of related concepts of Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Virtual Environments. We do not attempt to go into any of these issues in depth but rather outline general principles and discuss them in a sense broad enough to provide sufficient foundations for a further study. In other words, we aim to provide a set of keywords to the reader in order give him a good starting point from which he could go on and explore any of these issues in detail. Table of Contents: Preface / Acknowledgments / Lecture 1--Introduction / Lecture 2--History of VR and Current Applications / Lecture 3--Human Senses / Lecture 4--VR Systems / Lecture 5--User Experience, Human Computer Interaction and UI / Lecture 6--Input Devices and Tracking / Lecture 7--Displays / Lecture 8--Networked VR / Lecture 9--Augmented Reality / Lecture 10--VE and Video Games / Bibliography / Author's Biography / Index Preface 17 Acknowledgments 19 Lecture 1–Introduction 21 Outline of the Lecture 21 What is Virtual Reality? 21 Perception of Reality 22 Altering Perception of Reality 23 Goal of VR 23 Virtual Environments 24 Virtual Reality and Other Media 24 Immersion 25 Multimodal Experiences 26 Uncanny Valley 26 Interaction 27 Interaction Loop 28 Interaction vs. Immersion 28 Definition of Virtual Environments 28 Types of VEs 29 Lecture 2–History of VR and Current Applications 33 Outline of the Lecture 33 History of VR 33 Human Mind and Senses 33 Ancient Origins 34 Realism in Visual Arts 35 Development of Photography 36 Moving Pictures 36 Stereo Vision 37 Head-mounted Displays 38 Flight Simulators 39 History of Computing 41 History of Human Computer Interaction 44 History of Virtual Reality 45 VE Today 47 Applications of VE 50 Fields Influenced by VR 51 Lecture 3–Human Senses 55 Outline of the Lecture 55 Human Senses 55 Purpose of Senses 55 Senses, Stimuli, and Sensation 56 Visual Sense–A Physical Phenomenon 58 Visual Sense–Physiology 59 Perception of Color 60 Depth Perception 60 Pattern Recognition 63 Motion Perception 63 Auditory Sense–A Physical Phenomenon 64 Audio Sense–Physiology 65 Audio Sense–Properties 66 Sensing the Direction of the Sound 67 Sense of Equilibrium 68 Haptic Sense 68 Sense of Proprioception 70 Synesthesia 70 Lecture 4–VR Systems 71 Outline of the Lecture 71 VR System Requirements 71 VR System Architecture 72 Computational Platforms 73 PC-based VR Systems 75 GPU 76 Distributed VR Systems 76 Mobile Devices and VE 77 I/O Devices–Standard 77 I/O Devices–VR Specific 78 CAVEs 79 VE Software 80 Scene Graph 80 3D Rendering Engines 81 3D Rendering 82 Physics Engine 83 Spatialized Audio 84 Lecture 5–User Experience, Human Computer Interaction and UI 87 Outline of the Lecture 87 User Experience 87 Human Computer Interaction 88 Evaluating User Experience 90 Skeumorphic Design 91 GUI Design for Virtual Environments 94 Typical 3D Interaction Tasks 95 Navigation 95 Reference Frames 95 Wayfinding 96 Wayfinding Help 96 Travel 97 Travel Tasks 98 Selection and Manipulation 99 System Control 100 Classification of System Control Methods 100 Graphical Menu Design Issues 100 Voice Commands 102 Gesture Commands 102 Tools 103 Multimodal UI 104 Symbolic Input 104 Lecture 6–Input Devices and Tracking 107 Outline of the Lecture 107 Purpose of Input Devices 107 Input Feedback 108 Human Related Issues 108 Degrees of Freedom 109 Data Glove 109 Pinch Glove 110 Tracking 112 Tracker Properties 112 Tracking Technology 112 Mechanical Trackers 113 Electromagnetic Trackers 113 AC Electromagnetic Trackers 114 DC Electromagnetic Trackers 114 Acoustic Trackers 115 Optical Trackers 115 Inertial trackers 116 Consumer Products 116 Motion Capture 117 Face Tracking 118 Lecture 7–Displays 121 Outline of the Lecture 121 Output Devices 121 Properties of Video Displays 121 Types of Video Displays 122 Display Technologies 123 Stereoscopic Displays 124 Stereoscopic Displays with Glasses 125 Active Shutter Glasses 125 Polarizing Filter Glasses 126 Anaglyph 3D Displays 126 Head-mounted Displays 128 CAVEs 128 Autostereoscopic Displays 129 Virtual Retinal Displays 130 Audio Displays 131 Wave Field Synthesis 133 Haptic Displays 134 Force Feedback 135 Lecture 8–Networked VR 137 Outline of the Lecture 137 Networked VE 137 Applications of Networked VE 137 Distributed Environment Issues 138 Architectures 138 Serverless Architectures 139 Peer-to-Peer Pros and Cons 139 Single Server Architecture 140 Single Server Pros and Cons 140 Multi-server Architecture 141 Coordinated Multi-server Architecture 141 Coordinated Multi-server Pros and Cons 142 State Synchronization 142 Shared Repository 142 Frequent State Regeneration 143 Dead Reckoning 143 Web 3D 144 X3D 144 WebGL 145 Lecture 9–Augmented Reality 147 Outline of the Lecture 147 Augmented vs. Virtual Reality 147 Basic Principle of Operation 148 History of Augmented Reality 148 AR Hidden in Real Life 150 Visual Augmented Reality 150 Image Registration 151 Marker-based Image Registration 151 Markerless AR Systems 152 Non-optical Image Registration 153 HMD Base AR Systems 153 Video AR Systems 154 Optical AR Systems 155 Monitor-based AR Systems 155 Projector-based AR Systems 155 Screens vs. Displays 156 Mobile AR 157 Audio AR Systems 158 Haptic AR 158 Inter-modal AR Systems 159 Ubiquitous/Wearable Computing 160 AR and Gaming 161 Lecture 10–VE and Video Games 163 Outline of the Lecture 163 Virtual Environments and Video Games 163 What is a Game? 164 Games as VEs 165 Two Paths 166 Video Games Monetization Models 167 Packaged Goods Marketing Models 168 Games as Virtual Tourist Destinations 169 Open World Games 169 Multiplayer Games and Social Interaction 170 Social Games 171 Game-like Aspects of Non-game VEs 172 Massive Multiplayer Online Games 173 VR Technology and Game-related Hardware 174 3D Graphics in Video Games 174 I/O Devices 175 Augmented Reality and Video Games 178 Bibliography 181 Author's Biography 191 Index 193 "SUMMARY" The book is based on the material originally developed for the course on Virtual Reality, which the author was teaching at Tampere University of Technology, as well as course on Virtual Environments that the author had prepared for the University for Advancing Studies at Tempe, Arizona. This original purpose has influenced the structure of this book as well as the depth to which we explore the presented concepts. Therefore, our intention in this book is to give an introduction into the important issues regarding a series of related concepts of Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Virtual Environments. We do not attempt to go into any of these issues in depth but rather outline general principles and discuss them in a sense broad enough to provide sufficient foundations for a further study. In other words, we aim to provide a set of keywords to the reader in order give him a good starting point from which he could go on and explore any of these issues in detail This book is based on the material originally developed for the course on Virtual Reality, which the author was teaching at Tampere University of Technology, as well as course on Virtual Environments that the author had prepared for the University for Advancing Studies at Tempe, Arizona. This original purpose has influenced the structure of this book as well as the depth to which we explore the presented concepts. Therefore, our intention in this book is to give an introduction into the important issues regarding a series of related concepts of Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Virtual Environments. We do not attempt to go into any of these issues in depth but rather outline general principles and discuss them in a sense broad enough to provide sufficient foundations for a further study. In other words, we aim to provide a set of keywords for readers in order to establish a good starting point from which they could go on and explore any of these issues in detail. Provides an introduction into the important issues regarding a series of related concepts of virtual reality, augmented reality, and virtual environments. The book does not go into any of these issues in depth but rather outlines general principles and discusses them in a sense broad enough to provide sufficient foundations for a further study.