Dave Pape

The ImmersaDesk and Infinity Wall projection-based virtual reality displays

Virtual reality (VR) can be defined as interactive computer graphics that provides viewer-centered perspective, large field of view and stereo. Head-mounted displays (HMDs) and BOOMs™ achieve these features with small display screens which move with the viewer, close to the viewers eyes. Projection-based displays [3, 7], supply these characteristics by placing large, fixed screens more distant from the viewer. The Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) of the University of Illinois at Chicago has specialized in projection-based VR systems. EVLs projection-based VR display, the CAVE™ [2], premiered at the SIGGRAPH 92 conference.In this article we present two new, CAVE-derived, projection-based VR displays developed at EVL: the ImmersaDesk™ and the Infinity Wall™, a VR version of the PowerWall [9]. We describe the different requirements which led to their design, and compare these systems to other VR devices.

Ygdrasil: a framework for composing shared virtual worlds

Ygdrasil is a programming framework for creating networked, multi-user virtual worlds, especially interactive artistic worlds. It provides a shared scene graph, a plug-in system for adding new behaviors, and a high-level script interface for composing these worlds. We describe the architecture of Ygdrasil, and its use in creating two applications that were demonstrated at the iGrid 2002 workshop.

Technologies for virtual reality/tele—immersion applications: issues of research in image display and global networking

The Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) has developed an aggressive program over the past decade to partner with scores of computational scientists and engineers all over the world. The focus of this effort has been to create visualization and virtual reality (VR) devices and applications for collaborative exploration of scientific and engineering data. Since 1995, our research and development activities have incorporated emerging high-bandwidth networks like the vBNS and its international connection point STAR TAP, in an effort now calledtele-immersion.

A hardware-independent virtual reality development system

Simulating virtual reality (VR) hardware allows programs to be written in a desktop environment without constant use of limited VR resources. Rather than shifting constantly between VR and workstation environments, developers at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) wanted to be able to test VR applications on the normal workstation console. We therefore created a software simulator for VR development. It simulates various VR system features with an interface that runs on an ordinary workstation. The simulator is implemented as part of the CAVE library, the programming library originally written to support the CAVE hardware. It can, however, be used to develop applications for several VR systems, including ImmersaDesks and head-coupled displays. The library itself has been designed so that use of the simulator or any supported hardware is entirely transparent to application code.

Collaborative virtual environments art exhibition

This panel presentation will exhibit artwork developed in CAVEs and discuss how art methodologies enhance the science of VR through collaboration, interaction and aesthetics. Artists and scientists work alongside one another to expand scientific research and artistic expression and are motivated by exhibiting collaborative virtual environments. Looking towards the arts, such as painting and sculpture, computer graphics captures a visual tradition. Virtual reality expands this tradition to not only what we face, but to what surrounds us and even what responds to our body and its gestures. Art making that once was isolated to the static frame and an optimal point of view is now out and about, in fully immersive mode within CAVEs. Art knowledge is a guide to how the aesthetics of 2D and 3D worlds affect, transform, and influence the social, intellectual and physical condition of the human body through attention to psychology, spiritual thinking, education, and cognition. The psychological interacts with the physical in the virtual in such a way that each facilitates, enhances and extends the other, culminating in a “go together” world. Attention to sharing art experience across high-speed networks introduces a dimension of liveliness and aliveness when we “become virtual” in real time with others.

Scripting the interactor: an approach to VR drama

In this paper, we describe a CAVE VR application, The Thing Growing, which is designed to engage the user in an emotional relationship with a computer-controlled character in the context of a fictional narrative. We discuss the process of building an interactor-centered virtual drama and assess The Thing Growing.

The agent takes the stage

The deployment of virtual characters in intermedia performance drives divergent agendas of this research group. From the perspective of performance studies, we examine the effect of computer-based characters as actors and believe explorations of mediated agency can open up new forms of engagement for live productions. From the visualisation point of view, we are interested in how abstraction and animation techniques, based on motion tracking and procedural methods, convey character and warp and extend the gestural repertoire of a human actor. In terms of interactive drama, we are working on stream of consciousness characters: algorithmically recombining text to create a psychological entity with an autonomous inner structure. From an artificial intelligence perspective, we investigate how to design and use intelligent agents as actors. These agendas reflect an odd mix of aesthetic and technical concerns, and rightly so, as they are driven by the different goals of our interdisciplinary team.

Human trials: an experiment in intermedia performance

Human Trials is simultaneously a public/private and embodied/disembodied performance. One user enters an immersive virtual environment and is led on an absurd quest. The challenges appear to be about control and the choices one makes in using power; but the games are rigged, the characters are duplicitous, the quest is a decoy, and the underlying test is how to cope with disempowerment. Meanwhile the experience is screened for a voyeuristic audience primed by reality TV. The audience members simultaneously watch multiple viewpoints of the virtual world, while live performers, networked into the virtual environment, attempt to entangle the protagonist in their improvisational machinations. The project combines virtual reality, networking, and artificial intelligence technologies.

Low-cost projection-based virtual reality display

This paper describes the construction of a single screen, projection-based VR display using commodity, or otherwise low-cost components. The display is based on Linus PCs, and uses polarized stereo. Our aim is to create a system that is accessible to the many museums and schools that do not have large budgets for exploring new technology. In constructing this system we have been evaluating a number of options for the screens, projectors, and computer hardware.

Transparently supporting a wide range of VR and stereoscopic display devices

This paper describes an architecture for virtual reality software which transparently supports a number of physical display systems and stereoscopic methods. Accurate, viewer- centered perspective projections are calculated, and graphics display options are set, automatically, independent of application code. The design is intended to allow greater portability of applications between different VR devices.