VR Based Visualization and Exploration of Plant Biological Data

This paper investigates the use of virtual reality (VR) technologies to facilitate the analysis of plant biological data in distinctive steps in the application pipeline. Reconstructed three-dimensional biological models (primary polygonal models) transferred to a virtual environment support scientists' collaborative exploration of biological datasets so that they obtain accurate analysis results and uncover information hidden in the data. Examples of the use of virtual reality in practice are provided and a complementary user study was performed.

Augmenting a Laser Pointer with a Diffraction Grating for Monoscopic 6DOF Detection

This article illustrates the detection of 6 degrees of freedom (DOF) for Virtual Environment interactions using a modified simple laser pointer device and a camera. The laser pointer is combined with a diffraction rating to project a unique laser grid onto the projection planes used in projection-based immersive VR setups. The distortion of the projected grid is used to calculate the translational and rotational degrees of freedom required for human-computer interaction purposes.

XSAMPL3D: An Action Description Language for the Animation of Virtual Characters

In this paper we present XSAMPL3D, a novel language for the high-level representation of actions performed on objects by (virtual) humans. XSAMPL3D was designed to serve as action representation language in an imitation-based approach to character animation: First, a human demonstrates a sequence of object manipulations in an immersive Virtual Reality (VR) environment. From this demonstration, an XSAMPL3D description is automatically derived that represents the actions in terms of high-level action types and involved objects. The XSAMPL3D action description can then be used for the synthesis of animations where virtual humans of different body sizes and proportions reproduce the demonstrated action. Actions are encoded in a compact and human-readable XML-format. Thus, XSAMPL3D describtions are also amenable to manual authoring, e.g. for rapid prototyping of animations when no immersive VR environment is at the animator's disposal. However, when XSAMPL3D descriptions are derived from VR interactions, they can accomodate many details of the demonstrated action, such as motion trajectiories,hand shapes and other hand-object relations during grasping. Such detail would be hard to specify with manual motion authoring techniques only. Through the inclusion of language features that allow the representation of all relevant aspects of demonstrated object manipulations, XSAMPL3D is a suitable action representation language for the imitation-based approach to character animation.

Simulations- und VR-basierte Steuerungsverifikation zellularer Intralogistiksysteme

Die hohe Komplexität zellularer intralogistischer Systeme und deren Steuerungsarchitektur legt die Verwendung moderner Simulations- und Visualisierungstechniken nahe, um schon im Vorfeld Aussagen über die Leistungsfähigkeit und Zukunftssicherheit eines geplanten Systems treffen zu können. In dieser Arbeit wird ein Konzept für ein Simulationssystem zur VR-basierten Steuerungsverifikation zellularer Intralogistiksysteme vorgestellt. Beschrieben wird die Erstellung eines Simulationsmodells für eine real existierende Anlage und es wird ein Überblick über die Bestandteile der Simulation, insbesondere die Anbindung der Steuerung des realen agentenbasierten Systems, gegeben.

Hands-Free Navigation in Immersive Environments for the Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Indoor Navigation Systems

While navigation systems for cars are in widespread use, only recently, indoor navigation systems based on smartphone apps became technically feasible. Hence tools in order to plan and evaluate particular designs of information provision are needed. Since tests in real infrastructures are costly and environmental conditions cannot be held constant, one must resort to virtual infrastructures. This paper presents the development of an environment for the support of the design of indoor navigation systems whose center piece consists in a hands-free navigation method using the Microsoft Kinect in the four-sided Definitely Affordable Virtual Environment (DAVE). Navigation controls using the user's gestures and postures as the input to the controls are designed and implemented. The installation of expensive and bulky hardware like treadmills is avoided while still giving the user a good impression of the distance she has traveled in virtual space. An advantage in comparison to approaches using a head mounted display is that the DAVE allows the users to interact with their smartphone. Thus the effects of different indoor navigation systems can be evaluated already in the planning phase using the resulting system

Ermittlung der Leistungsverfügbarkeit zellularer Intralogistiksysteme mit Hilfe von Simulations- und VR-Techniken

Die Bestimmung der Leistungsverfügbarkeit als Maß für den Erfüllungsgrad logistischer Prozesse erfolgt gewöhnlich während des Betriebes einer logistischen Anlage. Wir haben ein Simulationssystem entwickelt, um die Leistungsverfügbarkeit einer zellularen intralogistischen Anlage schon im Vorfeld ermitteln zu können. Die detailgenaue Simulation erfasst dabei nicht nur Einflüsse statischer Parameter wie Dimensionierung der Anlage sondern auch dynamische Parameter, wie Fahrzeugverhalten oder Auftragszusammensetzung. Aufgrund der Echtzeit- und VR-Fähigkeit des vorgestellten Systems, ist eine Präsentation in einer VR-Umgebung möglich. Intuitive Interaktionsmechanismen und Visualisierungs-Metaphern bieten einen intuitiven Zugang zur Leistungsverfügbarkeit des Systems und den Größen, die sie beeinflussen.

Influence of Comfort on 3D Selection Task Performance in Immersive Desktop Setups

Immersive virtual environments (IVEs) have the potential to afford natural interaction in the three-dimensional (3D) space around a user. However, interaction performance in 3D mid-air is often reduced and depends on a variety of ergonomics factors, the user's endurance, muscular strength, as well as fitness. In particular, in contrast to traditional desktop-based setups, users often cannot rest their arms in a comfortable pose during the interaction. In this article we analyze the impact of comfort on 3D selection tasks in an immersive desktop setup. First, in a pre-study we identified how comfortable or uncomfortable specific interaction positions and poses are for users who are standing upright. Then, we investigated differences in 3D selection task performance when users interact with their hands in a comfortable or uncomfortable body pose, while sitting on a chair in front of a table while the VE was displayed on a headmounted display (HMD). We conducted a Fitts' Law experiment to evaluate selection performance in different poses. The results suggest that users achieve a significantly higher performance in a comfortable pose when they rest their elbow on the table.

Automatic Data Normalization and Parameterization for Optical Motion Tracking

Methods for optical motion capture often require timeconsuming manual processing before the data can be used for subsequent tasks such as retargeting or character animation. These processing steps restrict the applicability of motion capturing especially for dynamic VR-environments with real time requirements. To solve these problems, we present two additional, fast and automatic processing stages based on our motion capture pipeline presented in [HSK05]. A normalization step aligns the recorded coordinate systems with the skeleton structure to yield a common and intuitive data basis across different recording sessions. A second step computes a parameterization based on automatically extracted main movement axes to generate a compact motion description. Our method does not restrict the placement of marker bodies nor the recording setup, and only requires a short calibration phase.

MHP Oriented Interactive Augmented Reality System for Sports Broadcasting Environments

Television and movie images have been altered ever since it was technically possible. Nowadays embedding advertisements, or incorporating text and graphics in TV scenes, are common practice, but they can not be considered as integrated part of the scene. The introduction of new services for interactive augmented television is discussed in this paper. We analyse the main aspects related with the whole chain of augmented reality production. Interactivity is one of the most important added values of the digital television: This paper aims to break the model where all TV viewers receive the same final image. Thus, we introduce and discuss the new concept of interactive augmented television, i. e. real time composition of video and computer graphics - e.g. a real scene and freely selectable images or spatial rendered objects - edited and customized by the end user within the context of the user's set top box and TV receiver.

Evaluation of Binocular Eye Trackers and Algorithms for 3D Gaze Interaction in Virtual Reality Environments

Tracking user’s visual attention is a fundamental aspect in novel human-computer interaction paradigms found in Virtual Reality. For example, multimodal interfaces or dialogue-based communications with virtual and real agents greatly benefit from the analysis of the user’s visual attention as a vital source for deictic references or turn-taking signals. Current approaches to determine visual attention rely primarily on monocular eye trackers. Hence they are restricted to the interpretation of two-dimensional fixations relative to a defined area of projection. The study presented in this article compares precision, accuracy and application performance of two binocular eye tracking devices. Two algorithms are compared which derive depth information as required for visual attention-based 3D interfaces. This information is further applied to an improved VR selection task in which a binocular eye tracker and an adaptive neural network algorithm is used during the disambiguation of partly occluded objects.

Gaze behavior nonlinear dynamics assessed in virtual immersion as a diagnostic index of sexual deviancy: preliminary results

This paper presents preliminary results about the use of virtual characters, penile plethysmography and gaze behaviour dynamics to assess deviant sexual preferences. Pedophile patients’ responses are compared to those of non-deviant subjects while they were immersed with virtual characters depicting relevant sexual features.

Spatial audition in a static virtual environment : the role of auditory-visual interaction

The integration of the auditory modality in virtual reality environments is known to promote the sensations of immersion and presence. However it is also known from psychophysics studies that auditory-visual interaction obey to complex rules and that multisensory conflicts may disrupt the adhesion of the participant to the presented virtual scene. It is thus important to measure the accuracy of the auditory spatial cues reproduced by the auditory display and their consistency with the spatial visual cues. This study evaluates auditory localization performances under various unimodal and auditory-visual bimodal conditions in a virtual reality (VR) setup using a stereoscopic display and binaural reproduction over headphones in static conditions. The auditory localization performances observed in the present study are in line with those reported in real conditions, suggesting that VR gives rise to consistent auditory and visual spatial cues. These results validate the use of VR for future psychophysics experiments with auditory and visual stimuli. They also emphasize the importance of a spatially accurate auditory and visual rendering for VR setups.

Virtual characters designed for forensic assessment and rehabilitation of sex offenders: standardized and made-to-measure

This paper presents two studies pertaining to the use of virtual characters applied in clinical forensic rehabilitation of sex offenders. The first study is about the validation of the perceived age of virtual characters designed to simulate primary and secondary sexual character of typical adult and child individuals. The second study puts to use these virtual characters in comparing a group of sex offenders and a group of non deviant individuals on their sexual arousal responses as recorded in virtual immersion. Finally, two clinical vignettes illustrating the use of made-to-measure virtual characters to more closely fit sexual preferences are presented in Discussion.

OCTAVIS: Optimization Techniques for Multi-GPU Multi-View Rendering

We present a high performance-yet low cost-system for multi-view rendering in virtual reality (VR) applications. In contrast to complex CAVE installations, which are typically driven by one render client per view, we arrange eight displays in an octagon around the viewer to provide a full 360° projection, and we drive these eight displays by a single PC equipped with multiple graphics units (GPUs). In this paper we describe the hardware and software setup, as well as the necessary low-level and high-level optimizations to optimally exploit the parallelism of this multi-GPU multi-view VR system.