VRIC Laval Virtual, 9th Virtual Reality International Conference Report

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VRIC Laval Virtual, 9th Virtual Reality
International Conference Report

• A Short Presentation On The 9th Virtual Reality
  International Conference At Laval, France
• By Christos Gatzidis
• City University, London UK
• http//vega.soi.city.ac.uk/abbp171/
• http//christosgatzidis.blogspot

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Overview Of The Conference

• Laval Virtual International Conference (VRIC) is
  an annual Virtual Reality conference based in
  Laval, France (couple of hours from Paris)
• This year it was the 9th edition of the
  conference, held between April 18th and 20th
• Sponsored by IEEE French Section and ACM
  SIGGRAPH
• Proceedings will appear in ACMs Digital Library
  in the next few weeks
• Apart from the academic side of the conference,
  a VR exhibition centre was also set-up, many
  interesting technologies found there
• For more information http//www.laval-virtual.org
  /

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Paper No. 1

• Virtual Urban Design (pp 177-183) by M.
  Ceconello and E. Paquet (Department of Industrial
  Design, Art Communication, Politecnico di
  Milano Institute For Information Technology,
  National Research Council Ontario)
• A demonstration of how 3D representations can be
  used as a support for urban planning and design
  in order to ensure the validity of a variety of
  future interventions and modifications
• Establishing the best strategy for these
  modifications to be roll-backed, reclaimed and
  re-qualified
• Results show that the planning action needs a
  support in either the analysis or presentation of
  the results
• Research shown in the paper has been applied to
  the historical centre of Milan (positively
  evaluated by technicians and city managers)

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Paper No. 2

• 3D visualisation tool for Virtual models of
  natural disasters (pp 37-43) by Eva Pajorava,
  Ladislav Hluchy, Ladislav Halada, Peter Slizik
  (Institute Of Informatics, Slovak Academy Of
  Sciences)
• This work describes the creation of a 3D
  visualisation tool for the presentation of
  natural disasters (forest fire spreads, floods,
  landslides and others)
• Grid computing approach raises the requirements
  of visualisation within grid solution for the
  presentation of the results, work here attempts
  to tackle these issues
• The 3D visualization tool as well as the submit
  workflow were tested on the applications involved
  with project MEDIGRID and on other natural
  disaster applications to check for integration
  capabilities, evaluation results numerous
  screengrabs shown in the paper

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Paper No. 3

• VR Platform for Protection Modeling of Critical
  Infrastructures (pp 73-82) by P. Assogna, G.
  Bertocchi, W. Gehrke, A. Paoluzzi, S. Portuesi,
  G. Scorzelli, M. Vicentino, R. Zollo (University
  Roma Tre, La Sapienza, Italy Theorematica)
• Current protection of critical building
  infrastructures is based on disparate and
  incompatible systems
• Presenting a unified, integrated platform, with
  various sensors and security systems encompassed
  over the digital model, with fast, inexpensive
  construction of 3D interior building model from
  line drawings of arch. plans
• Approach favoured focuses on generation of BSP
  (Binary Space Partition) models of buildings from
  arch. plans through automatic translation into a
  symbolic intermediate geometric lang. -gt detailed
  representations of infrastructure portions
  generated at run-time by a streaming data-flow
  process

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Paper No. 4

• Affordable And Detailed Urban Development
  Visualisation (pp 191-195) by Jose Daniel Gomez
  De Segura, Rosa Peral, Sara Sillaurren, Eduardo
  Ibanez (European Virtual Engineering EUVE-,
  Spain)
• This paper tackles the technical aspects of the
  development of a dedicated VR application for the
  Spanish Ministry Of Housing and includes
  evaluation results of user experience
• The goal of the project presented is to implement
  an application showcasing the importance and
  benefits of an urban development programme to the
  population and local authorities, using a low-end
  market PC with a touch screen
• Model includes digital terrain and different
  views -top down approach- (country view, city
  view, house view) all displaying different levels
  of the site plus new user-interface implemented
  (touch screen only source of interaction)

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Paper No. 5

• Interactive Outdoor Mobile Augmentation Using
  Markerless Tracking GPS (pp 285-288) by Petri
  Honkamaa, Sanni Siltanen, Jani Jappinen, Charles
  Woodward, Otto Korkalo (VTT Technical Research
  Centre Of Finland)
• This paper presents novel interactive approaches
  for outdoor augmentation with a mobile device,
  using a GPS equipped Pocket PC and feature
  tracking for estimating camera motion
• Two scenarios are examined a) always applicable
  with any 3D model for ad hoc use without prior
  knowledge or calibration process and b) using the
  GPS for defining the viewing location and Google
  Earth KML files for defining the augmented object
  placement
• Functionality extended to automatically
  downloaded and visualizing all Google Earth
  content on a location aware mobile device

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Other Interesting Papers

• Bayesian Networks For Scenario Generation in the
  HESTIA Crisis Management Tool (pp 9-15) by
  Frederic Clerc and Paul Munteanu (BAYESIA)
• Tools For Generating High Fidelity Scenarios For
  Training In A Virtual Urban Environment (pp
  29-36) by Christopher P. Rahaim, Laura L. Arns
  (Purdue University, France)
• Crafting The Mobile Augmented Reality Museum
  Guide (pp 303-306) by Areti Damala, Pascal
  Houlier and Isabelle Marchal (France Telecome
  Research Development)
• Model-driven multi-user realistic prototyping of
  mobile augmented reality (pp 293-296) by Wafaa
  Abou Moussa, Nelly De Bonnefoy, Ines Verhaeghe
  and Jean-Pierre Jesselm Emmanuel Dubois
  (Universite Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France)

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Our Paper

• Automatic Modelling, Generation And
  Visualisation Of Realistic 3D Virtual Cities For
  Mobile Navigation (pp 225-234)
• showcases a comprehensive 3D procedural solution
  for automatic generation of photorealistic
  virtual urban content for mobile devices (Virtual
  City Maker) a visualisation tool for this
  purpose (Virtual Navigator), presented at a
  previous Brown Bag session, found at
  http//vega.soi.city.ac.uk/abbp171/Laval2007.pdf

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Next Years Conference Under Review?

• Next years Laval Virtual conference is between
  the 9th and the 13th of April, 10th anniversary
  of the conference, topics of interest yet to be
  announced
• Next possible Brown Bag presentation, paper on
  Virtual City Maker And Virtual Navigator A
  Modelling And Visualisation Solution For The
  Creation And Display Of Mobile 3D Virtual Cities
  under review for the annual ACM sponsored VRST
  (Virtual Reality Software And Technologies)
  conference in early November