CS 528 Syllabus

CS 528: Virtual Reality - Fall 2007

Andy Johnson

Electronic Visualization Laboratory
2032 Engineering Research Facility (ERF) and 918 SEO

(312) 996-3002 (phone)	aej at evl.uic.edu
(312) 413-7585 (fax)	www.evl.uic.edu/aej

office hours: 4:45 - 6:00 after class on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and by appointment

26620 Lecture - Tuesday / Thursday from 3:30pm to 4:45pm in 2068 ERF

TEXTBOOK:

Understanding Virtual Reality: Interface, Application, and Design

by Bill Sherman and Alan Craig

Available online from www.amazon.com and www.bn.com

• Hardcover: 582 pages ;
• Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann; 1st ed (September / 2002)
• ISBN: 1558603530

SCHEDULE OF TOPICS TO BE COVERED:

Day	Topic	Events	Chapter
8/28 8/30	Introduction to VR	- Proj 1 out 8/30	1 & 2
9/04 9/06	Tracking & Demos	- Last week to drop	3
9/11 9/13	Vision and Visuals	-	4 & 5
9/18 9/20	Interaction & Applications	-	6
9/25 9/27	Collaboration & Development	-	7 & 8
10/2 10/4	In-class time to work on C-Wall	- Proj 1 due 10/5 at 5pm
10/9 10/11	Project 1 Presentations	- First paper choice due 10/12 at 5pm
10/16 10/18	Project 1 Presentations	- Proj 2 choice due 10/19 at 5pm
10/23 10/25	Paper Presentations	-
10/30 11/1	Paper Presentations	-
11/06 11/08	Paper Presentations	- Proj 2 progress report due 11/9 at 5pm
11/13 11/15	Paper Presentations	-
11/20	Cheap VR & Thanksgiving	-
11/27 11/29	Testing & Project 2 Presentations	- Proj 2 due 11/28 at 5pm
12/04 12/06	Project 2 Presentations	-
12/12	Final Exam	- from 3:30 to 5:30

note that dates are given in the US style of month/day

"We have so much time and so little to do! No! Wait! Strike that! Reverse it! " -- Willy Wonka

PREREQUISITES:

Officially, you must have passed CS 488 (Computer Graphics I) to take CS 528. Unofficially, its a good idea to have passed CS 488 but this course shouldn't be a problem for anyone with some programming and computer graphics experience. You may want to check out my CS 488 notes at http://www.evl.uic.edu/aej/488/ . As with all 500 level courses at UIC the instructor can waive the official prerequisites.

Standard CS disclaimer: If you do not have the prerequisites for this course make sure that you drop this course right away. The CS department will verify the prerequisites for all students registered in this course during the first few weeks of the term and if you do not have the prerequisites, you will be notified and dropped from the course after the normal drop/add period. By that time, you will not be able to enroll in any new course.

OVERVIEW:

Principles of virtual reality and virtual environments, hardware, software and design issues in presenting images and sound in immersive environments, input and control devices, quantitative assessment of virtual reality systems.

ATTENDANCE:

Attendance is very important, but not mandatory. Part of your grade will be based on your in-class participation (i.e. asking good questions, making good comments) so please take that into account.

"Those who are absent are always wrong." - African proverb

ASSIGNMENTS:

Each student will present a published research paper during the term.

There will be two projects - a short first one to get familiar with the hardware and software, and then a longer team project which will have an intial review in the middle of the term and a final review at the end of the term.

More on the paper presentations

The lectures in class will give a general introduction to VR principles and techniques with examples based on the work that EVL has done since 1990. Its important to get a broader view of current research being done around the world and this is where the research paper presentations come in.
You can find papers on the web or in print. Preference will be given to papers from IEEE VR, Presence, SIGGRAPH, and CHI. Preference will be given to papers published within the last two years. EVL papers are off limits.
As soon as you find a paper you like, you should email Andy so he can agree to it before the deadline. If two people ask to present the same paper then the first person who's email arrives to Andy's mailbox gets the paper.
The paper presentations will be done individually, be 20 minutes long, and are expected to be be professional. You don't need to dress up, but the A/V should be good, it must be rehearsed, and the audience should learn from the presentation. Being able to present you work effectively to others is a very important skill, and the paper presentations will help you work on your skills in this area.
Your presentation should show that you fully understand the material - being able to explain something to other people is a very good way of showing mastery of a subject. This probably means that you will need to investigate other sources of related information (ie the references of the paper.)
Time your presentation so that you make use of all of your alotted time, but do not go over. Finishing early is not a virtue - it just indicates bad planning.
See the link on the course web site for information on how to give good presentations from an EVL point of view. Whatever you do, don't read the paper to your audience.
Assume an additional 5-10 minutes of questions at the end.
Paper presentation slots will be randomly assigned. You may trade slots with other students as you wish as long as both agree to the trade and you notify Andy about it at least a week before the presentation.
The paper must be made available to the entire class at least one week before your presentation, either by you giving out printed copies, putting it on the wiki, or by sending around a publically available URL where the complete paper can be found on the web.
Everyone in the class is expected to read the papers before coming to class so we can have a good discussion on the material.
By October 11 you should have picked your paper and had it confirmed.

More on the projects

Talking about VR is one thing, but to really understand it, you need to create virtual worlds yourself and learn by doing.
There will be 2 projects in the course.
The first project is a short individual project that will focus on creating a simple VR environment to get everyone familiar with the available software and give you a sense of the scope of the projects that you can create.
The second project will focus on creating a more complicated virtual world. This second project can either be done as individuals or in groups of two or three. Groups of two or three are responsible for CLEARLY delineating each persons role in the project. Groups of n people are expected to do n times as much work as a group of one.
This year we will standardize the implementation language on Electro (http://www.evl.uic.edu/rlk/electro/). The resulting application must be interactive, have stereo visuals, and do correct position/orientation tracking (head, object, etc). The projects will primarily be demonstrated on the C-wall in the classroom. You will be able to book time on the C-wall for development and testing. We have some other newer displays that may be available as well - the haptic based PARIS, the high-resolution immersaDesk 4, and the auto-stereoscopic Varrier and Personal Varrier.
We will talk more about the projects in class and there is more detail on the project web pages.
The same link describing a good presentation also talks about giving a good demonstration.
By October 19 you should have chosen your project team (if you want to have one), and confirmed your project topic.

"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand" - Chinese proverb

More on the class participation

10% of the course grade is based on class participation - that is making interesting comments, asking good questions, and contributing to the group discussion.
Attending class is not rewarded; being an active constructive participant in the class is rewarded.

EXAMINATIONS:

There will be an open-book final exam at the end of the term covering the material presented in class. The web page for the course shows the questions that were previously asked in the finals. I would expect that this year's final will be of a similar form.

GRADES:

The final grade will be calculated as follows	%	Letter grades will be assigned as follows
Projects (including presentation)	50%	A: 87% - 100%
Paper Presentation	20%	B: 75% - 86%
In class participation	10%	C: 62% - 74%
Final Exam	20%	D: 50% - 61%
TOTAL	100%	E: 00% - 49%

The fine print;

Note: that you must get a passing (D or better) grade on both projects and final to get a passing grade in the course.

Also note: I only give Incompletes for serious hospitalization issues which come up suddenly near the end of the term.

Also also note: I have no qualms about giving Ds or Es in a graduate level course, though almost all of the grades have tended to be As and Bs.