Introduction to Virtual Reality and Virtual Environments

1
Introduction to Virtual Reality and Virtual
Environments

• Chris Shaw, Ph.D.
• Georgia Institute of Technology

2
How is VR Different?

• Objects in the environment have a strong sense of
  spatial presence, creating the effect that the
  objects exist independently of the user.
• Control of and interaction with the environment
  is often through direct manipulation of objects
  in the real world.

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Different (cont.)?

• The computer interface is hidden in the sense
  that the user interacts with objects in the
  environment rather than a computer which controls
  objects in the environment.
• The user is immersed in the environment, i.e.,
  the user experiences the environment from within.

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What is Virtual Reality?

• In virtual reality you have a sense of and
  interact with three-dimensional things as opposed
  to pictures or movies of things.
• VR is the use of computer technology to create
  the effect of a 3-D environment (virtual
  environment) containing 3-D objects which have a
  strong sense of spatial presence with respect to
  the user.

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Related Areas

• Augmented Reality
• Computer-generated imagery is superimposed upon
  your view of the real world.
• Telepresence
• The use of various technologies to produce the
  effect of placing the user in another location.

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Conceptualizing VR

• Hardware perspective
• Users perspective
• Application designers perspective
• Classification of environmental activity

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Hardware perspective

• What display modalities and technologies will I
  use?
• What sensor modalities and technologies will I
  use?
• What is my computation environment?
• How many active users do I wish to accommodate?

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Users perspective
Setting
Objects
Humans
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Application designers perspective

• Software structures that run the virtual
  environment
• Rendering group
• Graphics, audio, haptic
• Sensor polling group
• Separately poll each sensor hardware subsystem
• Computation group
• Manage the state of the environment

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Classification of environmental activity

• Environments are either interactive or
  non-interactive.
• Environments are either active or passive.
• Passive, non-interactive environments
• Passive, interactive environments
• Active, non-interactive environments
• Active, interactive environments