Leaky&rsquo;s Room is a virtual environment, developed by Keith Beu, that uses audience participation and real-time video and was created as a component of The Great Sandini Virtual Circus of the CAVE&trade; virtual environment. 

The audience entered Leaky&rsquo;s Roomby falling through a trap door in the floor of a virtual circus tent. A short tunnel ride later, the participant would land in the &ldquo;hall of mirrors&rdquo; itself where live video of the viewers would be distorted in real-time and displayed back in the CAVE&trade;. This provided a &ldquo;house-of-mirrors&rdquo;-type effect, where the audience would see themselves distorted as if in a circus fun-house mirror. The live video feed of the viewers was distorted in real-time through use of Beu&rsquo;s proprietary <a href='http://www.evl.uic.edu/beu/IMGPROS/imageProcessing.html'>image processing tools</a>.

A still from the Hall of Mirrors in Leaky&rsquo;s Room

Leaky&rsquo;s Room

The virtual reality environment Food Court, a circus attraction within a virtual tent of The Great Sandini Virtual Reality Circus, allowed participants to select various tasty circus treats and feed them to the giant undulating 3-D tongues! 

The Great Sandini Virtual Reality Circus was a collaboration between several EVL graduate students, under the direction of Jim Barr. It premiered at the EVE4 event in the Spring of 1995 and subsequently at SIGGRAPH 96, Ars Electronica and the Total Museum Conference.

A still from Food Court

Food Court

&ldquo;The Great Sandini Virtual Reality Circus of the CAVE&trade;&rdquo; was originally created for EVL&rsquo;s EVE4 presentation in Spring 1995; this premiere also marked EVL graduate student Jim Barr&rsquo;s MFA Thesis show. An updated version of this CAVE&trade; experience showed at SIGGRAPH 96, the opening of the Ars Electronica Center, and at the Total Museum Conference. 

&ldquo;The Circus&rdquo; environment consisted of several virtual &ldquo;attractions&rdquo;. Participants traveled through a virtual midway and visited &ldquo;tents&rdquo; containing circus-like experiences along the way. &ldquo;The Circus&rdquo; was a collaborative effort whereby developers from art &amp; design and computer science disciplines created a single attraction or &ldquo;tent&rdquo; within the virtual environment. 

The attractions included the following: 
<ul>
<li>The Food Court</li>
<li>Jack in the Box</li>
<li>Jaws of Death</li>
<li>Haunted House</li>
<li>PsychoTunnel</li>
<li>Leakey&rsquo;s Room</li>
<li>Vomit Mountain</li>
</ul>

The Main Sandini Circus Tent

The Great Sandini Virtual Reality Circus of the CAVE&trade;

The Jack-in-the-Box application grew out of a desire to create something fun and active in a virtual environment, and was originally designed as an element in Jim Barr&rsquo;s The Great Sandini Virtual Reality Circus. 

This application, like a shooting gallery, lets the CAVE&trade; guest shoot missiles at a moving target. The target is a Jack-in-the-Box that springs up, then bobs crazily waiting to be hit. The &ldquo;wand&rdquo; is used to shoot snowballs at the jack heads. When the jacks are successfully hit they complain. 

This application uses a grab-bag of graphical techniques to make the jacks look and behave dynamically and realistically. The body is a single spring chain length. The head bobbing is achieved using a quaternion aligned along the last few lengths of the spring chain. The head is a displaced sphere; the displacement is a function of the green component of an RBG image. The image is also texture mapped onto the deformed sphere. The image has two functions - providing the shape and color of the head. The snowballs and yellow &ldquo;sparkles&rdquo; are based on particle systems.

A still from Jack-in-the-Box

Jack-in-the-Box

Artica Intergalaxia is an intergalactic gallery containing an exhibition of virtual reality art entitled Amorphous Cubes. 

The idea behind the exhibition space was to create a virtual experience for the viewer / user not only in viewing the art work, but also by creating a journey to each one of the four works of art. 

Because virtual art work is of a spatial nature, icons of the four works of art are exhibited in individual temples. 

The type of architecture was chosen to create a space in which viewers subconsciously are aware that they are within a gallery setting. The creation of the architecture in space places a known and familiar structure in a setting that could not ordinarily exist in reality. 

Artica was exhibited publicly, both on video and on an ImmersaDesk, at SIGGRAPH 96 in New Orleans. At SIGGRAPH, it was shown on video in the Computer Animation Festival. 

As a virtual environment, it was part of a collaborative EVL exhibit entitled Neither Here Nor There that was shown in both The Digital Bayou and The Bridge Art Show. For this exhibit, it was shown both as an individual work, but also as a part of CAT (CAVE&trade; All Terrain), a shared context software environment that integrated several VR Projects at EVL into one application. 

The CAT project, entitled The Oort Continuum, was created as the opening exhibition for the CAVE&trade; at the Ars Electronica Center (AEC). 

The AEC CAVE&trade; opened during the Ars Electronica Festival in 1996. The The Oort Continuum continues to be a part of AEC&rsquo;s permanent collection.

The Gallery

Artica Intergalaxia

Vandalism is an interactive virtual environment for the CAVE&trade; and ImmersaDesk&trade; VR systems. 

Vandalism was created as part of Neither Here Nor There, a collection of CAVE / ImmersaDesk&trade; applications shown at SIGGRAPH &rsquo;96, in The Bridge and the Digital Bayou. It was also a part of the opening of the Ars Electronica Center, at the Ars Electronica Festival &rsquo;96.

Vandalism

This autobiographical account by artist Rita Addison describes perceptual changes she experienced subsequent to her head injury in a car accident. DETOUR uses computer brain models and medical imaging to demonstrate anatomical trauma. In the final section, Addison&rsquo;s pre-accident photographic art is reconfigured to simulate the perceptual damage she sustained. 

A virtual-reality experience can be a powerful way to evoke and stretch empathic capabilities. Whether it is used in collaborative medical evaluations or to educate medical professionals, students, patients, and families, virtual-reality technology is a unique and invaluable tool for communication. 

This application was a part of VROOM - the Virtual Reality Room event showcased at SIGGRAPH 94.

VR Simulation of Distorted Vision

Detour: Brain Deconstruction Area Ahead

Computer graphics is on a quest, an obsessive mission, to perfectly replicate reality. This Michelangelo envy has resulted in the focus and advancement of computer graphics technology on rendering complex images and animations. Real time computer graphics also yearns for this duplication of the world we experience, but at a much different pace. Whereas, rendered images can take up to hours to complete, the real time computer graphics image must be rendered at least thirty times per second. Virtual reality environments depend upon this real time computer generated imagery to create a sense of immersion and interaction. Because of current computing technology it is extremely difficult to depict a natural realism in virtual reality. Nevertheless, that goal is the obsession. 

Push / Pop depicts a crude but effective rendering of the Gallery400 in Chicago. The application starts with the user facing a simulation of the Immersadesk. Using a joystick mounted on a wand, a user is allowed to navigate through the gallery. Five columns of the gallery are used as portals for entering into abstract spaces. The term Push / Pop (though technically is derived from pushmatrix and popmatrix GL function calls in coding language) refers to the action of pushing from depicted reality into an abstract environment. After experiencing these abstract spaces a user can then &ldquo;Pop&rdquo; back into the real gallery space. 

In the virtual Gallery400 there are two sculptures on pedestals. These two pieces represent a couple things. The sculptures presence directly illustrates the power and illusion capable with three dimensional stereo graphics. When the user gets close to one of the objects they can then extend a hand towards the illusion and conceptually touch the object. This illusion is the most powerful quality of virtual reality environments. A little closer though and the user is pushed into an alternative gallery space. This dynamic change of environment creates a desire to return to the sculpted objects in the realistic Gallery400. You can get close but not too close. 

The objects also represent the potential design tool which a virtual reality environment can become. These objects were designed by writing a computer program which allows for the designer to manipulate, rotate and repeat various sized rectangular objects until the desired shape and form is conceived. The resultant matrix of vertices&rsquo; points can then be translated into other software packages in which they in turn can be translated into file formats readable by commercial manufactures. The virtual environment allows a designer to examine in great detail a sculpture previous to any physical modeling. 

Push / Pop is an MFA Thesis project by Tom Coffin. It was also shown at The Bridge Art Show at SIGGRAPH 96.

A screen shot of the virtual gallery

Push / Pop

Using feature-based 3D metamorphosis allows the operator to treat 3D geometry the same way as 2D image: identifying features of the object enables it&rsquo;s manipulation. 

Metamorphosis could be done with one object (warping) or with two, where the transformation of one into another is created. The CAVE&trade; virtual environment was chosen for animator&rsquo;s interface because it provides the most intuitive way of selecting features in corresponding objects and for viewing results.

AeroMorph

Feature-Based 3D Metamorphosis

CitySpace is an educational networking project that invites students to build a virtual city model made up of 3D objects and images from sites around the world. 

The CitySpace project strives to present a learning model based on collaboration, simulation, visualization, and wide-area digital networking. The project is intended for integration into project-based curricula and is designed for self-managing groups of students, mentors, teachers, and resource administrators. 

The model relies on a flexible, open, high-speed network based on client-server technology, widespread access to desktop digital media production tools, and efficient utilization of high-end computational resources. 

This application was a part of VROOM - the Virtual Reality Room event showcased at SIGGRAPH 94 and was also demonstrated at Supercomputing &rsquo;95.

CitySpace VR Environment

CitySpace

The Oort Continuum is a virtual reality application designed for the CAVE&trade;, based on the CAT (CAVE All Terrain) shared context software environment written by Marcus Thiebaux. CAT integrated several independent virtual environments into a single application. The resultant &ldquo;cosmic collaboration&rdquo; is explored by users traveling around the virtual Oort Cloud ring and teleporting to various virtual environments. 

Jupiter Junction by Marcus Thiebaux allows users to explore the solar system without size limitation. 

Margaret Watson&rsquo;s, Artica Intergalaxia presents a virtual celestial gallery, immersing the visitors in a meditation of organic substances exhibited in fantastical architectural spaces. 

Dream Grrrls by Margaret Dolinsky and Grit Sehmisch invites users to explore dreaming in a labyrinth. Where they can discover paths that lead to whimsical worlds to ride a see-saw in the clouds or be captured by an animated vessel that shakes you into another world. 

The sculpture gardens and spaces within &ldquo;The Gallery of Motion&rdquo; take visitors through surreal mathematical landscapes and structures, where kinetic objects, snowstorms, strange attractors and knots can be explored. 

Push / Pop by Tom Coffin presents a virtual art space where black and white images are portals into alternative virtual worlds, where there is neither a top or bottom, up or down - and gravity does not exist. Coffin&rsquo;s collaboration with Gary Minnix, &ldquo;Yes Maybe No&rdquo; explores 2-dimensional images and photographs collaged in 3-space. 

Alan Cruz&rsquo;s and KaLeung Jark&rsquo;s Aquasphere allows participants to experience a virtual dive into the ancient ruins of Atlantis, while encountering unusual aquatic life along the way. 

The Oort showed at SIGGRAPH 96, the opening of the Ars Electronica Center in Linz, Austria, and at the Total Museum Conference in Chicago, IL.

Jupiter Junction

The Oort Continuum

Battalion is a game where &ldquo;A monster blows up, destroys&rdquo; repeats. It was written in 1994 on a Silicon Graphics Indy in GL for the IndiZone contest. This version also ran in the CAVE&trade; and on the Immersadesk&trade; as a virtual reality game at the EVE 4 art show in May 1995. The GL version won &ldquo;best indy software&rdquo; and is available on the Indizone3 CDROM. It was then converted to OpenGL (with several enhancements) and modified in late 1996 to work with the Mesa graphics library. In 1997 it won the Hot Mix 17 game contest from SGI, and was available on the Hot Mix 17 CDROM. 

Battalion now also runs on Suns under SunOS 4 and Solaris 2, under Linux, on HP workstations, under AIX, under OpenVMS, on the Macintosh G4s, on Windows 95 / NT and the BeOS.

Art - 1994

Leaky’s Room

Food Court

The Great Sandini Virtual Reality Circus of the CAVE™

Jack-in-the-Box

Artica Intergalaxia

Vandalism

Contact