Augmented Reality Sandbox with Real-Time Water Flow Simulation

Video of a sandbox equipped with a Kinect 3D camera and a projector to project a real-time colored topographic map with contour lines onto the sand surface. The sandbox lets virtual water flow over the surface using a GPU-based simulation of the Saint-Venant set of shallow water equations.

We (the UC Davis W.M. Keck Center for Active Visualization in the Earth Sciences, http://www.keckcaves.org) built this for an NSF-funded project on informal science education. These AR sandboxes will be set up as hands-on exhibits in science museums, such as the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center (TERC) or Lawrence Hall of Science.

Project home page: http://idav.ucdavis.edu/~okreylos/Res...

The sandbox is based on the original idea shown in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p7YVq...

The water flow simulation is based on the work of Kurganov and Petrova, "a second-order well-balanced positivity preserving central-upwind scheme for the Saint-Venant system."

• Category

  Science & Technology

[1ChilledDude]

So... Does this only work with detected variance in the height within the sandbox or will physical objects placed on the environment also affect flow?

[okreylos]

I'm not sure if I understand the question correctly. The Kinect only scans inside the bounds of the sandbox, but any non-sand objects you place on the sand will be picked up, and affect the water flow. During testing I used Lego bricks to build structures or levees, for example.

[Sainbayar Bayarbold]

Caught exception GLWindow : No suitable visual found while initializing rendering windows. How to fix this problem on mac pls help me.

[okreylos]

Please try version 2.4-004 or newer of Vrui; it has an updated visual selection algorithm that fixes this particular problem. If it doesn't, please provide details on what operating system version and what graphics card and driver you are using.

[Damian Wilkowski]

Is there any software for windows or its only for Mac ?

[okreylos]

This is only for Linux and Mac.

[okreylos]

You mean in the sense that he can now drink his own virtual urine the moment he gets dropped off in the wilderness?

[okreylos]

Have you tried reading the video description?

[sacolton]

Now to be able to build castles and villages. Have little knights on horses and GO TO WAR!

[psyzymonkey13]

He's like god of his sandbox

[ValekShadow]

Now you just need to add the game "population" so you can help people build villiages and all that.

[3goldy]

omg omg omg omg!! this is sooooo A-mazing!

[cookky48]

Yghnjhjnikujkmkkjh

[qGx3Bz8lFrM89Qgj]

kiedyś to się bawiło w kałuży

[vladen14]

OMG..this is.. AWESOME :D

[dylophosaurus]

ok this is awesome. AWESOME

[ShinyPennyYay]

I want.