Background


Virtual environments hold the promise to provide a shared space in which collaborative interactions of multiple users with virtual 3D models could occur as easily and smoothly as they would in the real world. Large projection-based stereoscopic displays are the most successful incarnation of such immersive virtual environments. They allow groups of people to simultaneously view a virtual three-dimensional scenario and support direct communication by voice and gestures. These systems use a fixed view point or track the head position of a single user and compute a stereoscopic image pair for that point of view. Unfortunately, when non-tracked users see these images, the virtual environment may appear severely distorted and it changes shape when users are moving. These distortions make it difficult to have a correct spatial understanding of the virtual word. As a consequence users cannot properly interact with the virtual objects and each user has a different spatial mental model of the virtual word, which limits the applicability of virtual environment technology considerably.

Objectives


  • Develop wireless high speed active and active-passive stereo glasses
  • Develop, build and evaluate a commercial quality projection-based stereoscopic multi-view display system for at least six tracked users
  • Develop, build and evaluate a prototypical projection-based stereoscopic multi-view system for at least 10 tracked people
  • Develop, build and evaluate wireless input devices and interaction techniques for collaborative multi-user interfaces in co-located multi-view environments
  • Develop, implement and evaluate collaborative automotive application scenarios
Our approach will use multiple video projectors displaying their images on top of each other. We will modify commercial DLP projectors to display three to twelve different views in fast time-sequential order per projector. Multiple such projectors will be used to display different colours and increase brightness as well as colour depth and extend the colour space. As an alternative approach we will employ pulsed or shuttered liquid crystal projectors displaying a single view each. Each user of our system is tracked and can move freely in front of the display while being continuously provided with an individual perspectively correct stereoscopic view with full and precise horizontal and vertical parallax as well as full display resolution.