From: Wouter Lotens Subject: Re: APPS: Augmented VR On Wed, 8 Dec 1993, Mario Davoli wrote: > I am after information relating to augmented VR. What devices are > available ? What companies deal with augmented VR ? and where can > I find more information about it ? You will have to specify what you mean by augmented. There may be made distinction between visual overlays, knowledge augmenting, obiquitous computing, etc. Most people think of visually augmenting only. No companies have so far come up with sets of equipment, but the basic equipment is as separate units available on the market. What you actually need depends on your specifications. The easiest setup is a monocular design, where the image appears on a screen, and where the real world video is combined with graphics as an overlay, i.e. without occlusion effects. All you need is a computer with a programmable video grabber card, a video camera, and software. A complicated design would be a merged full stereo image, with see-through HMD. Merged means here that depth and occlusion are implemented. A powerful computer (able to do image processing) and a chain of expensive devices is required. The best information to date you find in the proceedings of the VRAIS 93 conference and in the Comm of the ACM july '93, which is a special on augmented VE. In the literature you will find no more than about ten examples of augmented VE, all from research places and all demonstrations rather than applications, with the exception maybe of Boeing's. > Also if there is anyone who can explain to me exactly what > is capable by using augmented VR then that will be great to... > as you can see I'm after any information at all. It's easier to explain the problems than the abilities. What do you want to do with it? That will determine the capabilities of your system. Some of the major problems are of perceptive nature. Really merging the images is probably a significant factor in task performance of users. Accurate depth perception another. Both require depth analysis of the real world, which is complicated. Another problem is the registration of the real and synthetic worlds, so that they are in the same place in space, and stay there. This relates also to the accuracy of head trackers, the distortion in the optical system, and calibration procedures. One of these days I will finish a paper on augmented VE, that hopefully will appear in a decent journal. Before it has been reviewed I will not release manuscripts, to avoid multiplication of mistakes. Regards, Wouter Lotens Human Factors Lab, University of Washington, Seattle WA TNO Institute for Human Factors, Soesterberg, the Netherlands [Citations Wouter mentions are: CACM: Wellner, P., Mackay, W. and Gold, R. (guest editors) (1993, July). Computer-Augmented Environments: Back to the Real World [special issue]. Communications of the ACM, 36(7). For a list of the table of contents, see my Virtual Reality Update available via anonymous ftp at ftp.u.washington.edu ./public/VirtualReality/HITL/Bibliographies/vru-vol1rev.txt. VRAIS: Janin, A.L., Mizell, D.W., and Caudell, T.P. (1993). Calibration of Head-Mounted Displays for Augmented Reality Applications. In Proceedings of IEEE 1993 Virtual Reality Annual International Symposium, VRAIS '93 (pp. 246-255). Piscataway, NJ: IEEE Service Center. An earlier citation from Caudell and Mizell is: Caudell, T.P., Mizell, D.W. (1991). Augmented Reality: an Application of Heads-Up Display Technology to Manual Manufacturing Processes. In V. Milutinovic, B.D. Shriver, J.F. Nunamaker, and R.H. Sprague (Eds.) Proceedings of the Twenty-Fifth Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, volume 2 (pp. 659-669). Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society Press. -T.E.]