KeckCAVES "Highlight Reel"

A few short segments featuring some of the 3D visualization applications developed by the UC Davis KeckCAVES project. High-res videos and more at: http://www.keckcaves.org

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• virtual
• reality
• vr
• CAVE
• immersive
• graphics
• visualization
• earthquakes
• protein
• modeling
• volume
• rendering
• quake

[r3di2watch]

How would a person design a surface that you can walk on infinitely? My best feasible idea is a set of "skates" using casters or on a slick surface, but you would need to hold the person up by the torso, still it would allow complicated strafing and jumping/flying :)

[spelunkerucd]

I have seen a prototype of an adjustable treadmill with a "robot arm" the user gets strapped into at the University of Utah, but I didn't try it myself.

Then there's a project to have a large-scale "hamster wheel" where you walk on the inside of a freely rotating sphere. There's a video of that on youtube, search for "virtusphere".

[ilmale]

What do you use for tracking the camera?

Infrared/optical marker or magnetic sensor?

[spelunkerucd]

The tracking system is an InterSense IS-900 VE, which is a hybrid between inertial tracking (accelerometers and rate gyros) and ultrasound triangulation for drift control. It is a most excellent system, with low latency and high accuracy.

[houstondodgeball]

7:45 don't jump! Oh wait it's not real. I was actually hoping she would jump to see how it would look.

[goldencricket]

@parkerault you can have more than one user as long as you have different caves to put them in - you just have to simulate the other users in each cave.

[robinsahlberg]

now thats awesome.

[parkerault]

As long as you only have one user at a time :)

[spelunkerucd]

To be precise, neither stereo nor head tracking (motion parallax) work by themselves. It's the combination of the two that creates immersion and allows users to interact naturally with virtual objects.

We did a couple of experiments, and it turns out that head tracking without stereo works slightly better than stereo without head tracking (a good percentage of people have no stereo vision anyways), but both work much, much worse than stereo AND headtracking. I'll explain in another video.

[brandon9271]

nobody works for Xbox.. they work for Microsoft ;P

[tcresidents]

check out their other video, 'VR Quake 3 Arena Map Viewer'

[tcresidents]

Search youtube for 'cyberwalk'.

In my opinion, a good solution to a properly immersive 'holodeck' like 3d environment is to use this in conjunction with a CAVE or Sensics HMD, with a wearable haptic suit (google 'Immersion Haptic Workstation'). You'd be able to walk around and touch things with a feedback response (though not 'lean' against them).

[tcresidents]

It does add a lot, but only when used in conjunction with steroscopy. The main reason for this is you are watching this video in 2D, hence everything you see is on the zero plane so looks like it is the same distance from the viewer. If you were actually in there it wouldnt look right without steroscopy to resolve the actual distance your eyes are from each part of each object on the different screens.

[brandon9271]

wow.. this video proves to me that motion parallax or whatever its called adds just as much immersion as stereoscopic 3D.. maybe even more so. I want to build my own CAVE! :D