A discussion of the &ldquo;Grid&rdquo; networking infrastructure and its support of Tele-immersion applications.

The Global Technology Grid: Its Role in Virtual Reality

In teleimmersion, collaborators at remote sites share the details of a virtual world that can autonomously control computation, query databases, and gather results.  They don&rsquo;t meet in a room to discuss a car engine. They meet in the engine itself.

The Teleimmersive Data Explorer

Visualization in Teleimmersive Environments

The concept of a round Earth is not a simple one for children to acquire. Their everyday experience reinforces their deelply held notion that the Earth is flat. Told by adults that the Earth is round, they often react by constructing a mental model of the Earth as a pancake, or a terrarium-like structure with people living on the flat dirt layer inside, or even a dual model with a spherical Earth and a flat Earth coexisting simultaneously. In effect, children attempt to accomoodate the new knowledge within the framework of their existing conceptual models. Unfortunately, holding tight to the features of the prior models inhibits fundamental conceptual change.

ImmersaDesk in Elementary School Installation

The Round Earth Project: Collaborative VR for Conceptual Learning

In this paper we present a virtual mail (v-mail) system. The prototype system is developed to realize efficent &ldquo;handing-off&rdquo; of work between participants that are separated by great distances and/or time zones.

Supporting Transoceanic Collaborations in Virtual Environment

&ldquo;Las Meninas&rdquo; is a virtual reality artwork created for the CAVE.

Still from &ldquo;Las Meninas&rdquo;

Las Meninas: Narrative Illusions in Virtual Reality

This paper describes &ldquo;The Virtual Mail System&rdquo; software designed for collaborative communication in asynchronous tele-immersive applications. 

(This document is written in Japanese).

VR Mail System

This paper discusses the deployment of a collaborative VR environment in an elementary school to help teach children that the Earth is spherical.

A guide introduces a 2nd grader to his role as the astronaut at the ImmersaDesk

The Round Earth Project-Collaborative VR for Elementary School Kids

This paper proposes a methodology for employing collaborative, immersive virtual environments as a high-end visualization interface for massive data-sets. The methodology employs feature detection, partitioning, summarization and decimation to significantly cull massive data-sets. These reduced datasets are then distributed to the remote CAVEs, ImmersaDesks and desktop workstations for viewing. The paper also discusses novel techniques for collaborative visualization and meta-data creation.

Virtual Collaborative Work Session Built with CAVERNsoft

A Methodology for Supporting Collaborative Exploratory Analysis of Massive Data Sets in Tele-Immersive Environments

(art)n Laboratory and the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago have collaborated on the development of the first real-time, stereoscopic hardcopy output of virtual reality applications - the ImmersaGram (IGram). The results of this new technology directly address a broad range of information visualization issues along a wide spectrum of disciplines from art, architecture, and science, to medicine, engineering and education.

Blue Window Pane

Collaborative Visualization: New Advances in Documenting Virtual Reality with IGrams

The Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Indiana University collaborated on a major research demonstration at the IEEE / ACM Supercomputing &rsquo;98 (SC &rsquo;98) conference in Orlando, Florida, November 7-13, 1998 to showcase the evolution and importance of global research community networking. Collaborators worked together to solve complex computational problems using advance high-speed networks to access geographically distributed computing, storage and display resources. It is this collection of computer and communicaiton resources that we refer to as the International Grid (iGrid).
This paper presents an overview of the iGrid testbed, some of the underlying technologies used to enable distributed computing and collaborative problem solving, and descriptions of the applications. It concludes with recommendations for the future of global research community netowrking, based on the experiences of iGrid participants form the USA, Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, The Netherlands, Russia, Switzerland, Singapore, and Taiwan.

Colliding Neutron Stars across the Atlantic Ocean

The International Grid (iGrid): Empowering Global Research Community Networking Using High Performance International Internet Services

This is a white paper outlining a methodology for employing collaborative, immersive virutal environments as a high-end visualization interface for massive data-sets.

Artist&rsquo;s Rendition of CAVEscope System

A Tele-Immersive Environment for Collaborative Exploratory Analysis of Massive Data Sets

EVL 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 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 called tele-immersion. 

As a result of eight years experience building first and second-generation projection-based VR devices to support these applicaitons, we wish to describe needed research in third-generation VR devices aimed at desktop / office-sized displays. Since no current projection technology is yet configurable with ideal resolution and size, we must first describe the variety of emerging display devices. 

In 1991, we conceived and over several years developed the CAVE virutal reality theater, a room-sized, high-resolution, projection-based system that enables users to experience excellent immersion in full 3D imagery. We then developed the ImmersaDesk, a smaller, software-compatible, drafting-table-format version of the CAVE that has been deployed to dozens of locations, nationally and internationally, at government institutions, national laboratories, universities and companies. The hardware now needs to be made smaller, higher resolution and more adaptable to the human and his/her workspace. Middleware that manages connections, bandwidth and latency needs to be integrated with the computer systems driving these hardware devices. Software that increases the quality of human-computer interaction through human output recognition must be brought from specialized lab experiments to routine use, and provided as part of the tele-immersive collaborative experinece. This paper discusses many of the issues at the heart of this research.

Artist&rsquo;s Rendition of the PARIS System

Technologies for Virtual Reality / Tele-Immersion Applications: Issues of Research in Image Display and Global Networking

This paper describes the design, evaluation, and lessons learned from a project involving the implementation of an immersive virtual environment for children called NICE (Narrative-based, Immersive, Constructionist / Collaborative Environments). The goal of the NICE project was to construct a testbed for the exploration of virtual reality as a learning medium within the context of the primary educational reform themes of the past three decades. With a focus on informal education and domains with social content, NICE embraces the constructivist approach to learning, collaboration, and narrative development, and is designed to utilize the strengths of virtual reality: a combination of immersion, telepresence, immediate visual feedback, and interactivity. Based on our experiences with a broad range of users, the paper discusses both the successes and limitations of NICE, and concludes with recommendations for research directons in the application of immersive VR technologies to children&rsquo;s learning.

A child (represented by an avatar) planting in the NICE garden.

Learning and Building Together in a Virtual World

A distributed immersive virtual environment was deployed as a component of a pedagogical strategy for teaching third grade children that the Earth is round. The displacement strategy is based on the theory that fundamental conceptual change requires an alternative cognitive starting point which doesn&rsquo;t invoke the features of pre-existing models. While the VR apparatus helped to establish that alternative framework, conceptual change was strongly influenced by the bridging activities which related that experience to the target domain. Simple declarations of relevance proved ineffective. A more articulated bridging process involving physical models was effective for some children, but the multiple representations employed required too much model-matching for others.

Mission Controller / ImmersaDesk View of Asteroid

Bridging Strategies for VR-Based Learning

In this paper we discuss the design and implementation of a plasma display panel for a wide field of view desktop virtual reality environment. Present commercial plasma displays are not designed with virtual reality in mind, leading to several problems in generating stereo imagery and obtaining good tracking information.  Although we developed solutions for a number of these problems, the limitations of the system preclude its current use in practical applications, and point to issues that must be resolved for flat panel displays to be useful for VR.

User at ImmersaDesk3 Prototype Systems

The ImmersaDesk3 - Experiences With A Flat Panel Display for Virtual Reality

Design of Virtual Objects for Exact Collision Detection in Virtual Reality Modeling of a Manufacturing Process

Visual Field Effects of Body Stability

This paper describes the design and implementation of two tele-immersive applications, CVD and CAVE6D, both designed to support collaborative knowledge discovery from large multidimensional datasets. CVD integrates the capabilities of two existing VR applications, CAVE6D and Virtual Director, in order to provide immersive experiences of distributed data using high performance networks and interactive hardware and software. CAVE6D is similar in function yet is tightly integrated with the CAVERNsoft toolkit so as to provide access to remote computational platforms and databases.

View into CVD Showing Data, Avatars, Virtual Hand, Menus &amp; Camera Path

TeleImmersive Virtual Environments for Collaborative Knowledge Discovery

We describe our work on the development and use of collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) in support of very shallow water mine remediation, mission planning and rehearsal activities. Incorporating multiple data streams, the CVEs allow the user to view navigate and interact with data in a 3D environment, including graphical representations of bathymetry / topography, above-surface images, in-water objects (e.g. mines, bridges), and hydrographic characteristics (e.g. currents, water levels, temperature). Asynchronous collaborative capability allows users at many distributed sites to partake in a many-to-many session that takes place in a common virtual world. CAVE5D, a tool for immersive visualization of data to support oceanographic, meteorological and CFD studies, has been integrated with the VR application Virtual Director and the underlying collaborative architecture known as CAVERNsoft. CAVE5D provides visualization techniques to display multi-dimensional numerical data for atmospheric, oceanographic, and other similar models, including iso-surfaces, countour slices, volume visualization, wind / trajectory vectors, and various image projection formats. Virtual Director is a software framework that enables real-time VR data exploration, shared camera choreography between distributed sites, and animation creation capability. CAVERNsoft supports persitent CVEs for collaborative visualizations that involve supercomputers, massive data stores and the integration of additional &ldquo;real-time&rdquo; observations collected by autonomous sensors or swimmer scouts.

The Use of Collaborative Virtual Environments in the Mine Countermeasures Mission

A Comparative Study of Assembly Planning in Traditional and Virtual Environments

Application of Virtual Reality in Hospital Facilities Design

Airborne Contamination Analysis for Specialized Manufacturing Rooms Using Computational Fluid Dynamics and Virtual Reality

The Round Earth Project is investigating how virtual reality technology can be used to help teach concepts that are counter-intuitive to a learner&rsquo;s currently held mental model. Virtual reality can be used to provide an alternative cognitive starting point that does not carry the baggage of past experiences. In particular this paper describes our work in comparing two strategies for teaching young children that the Earth is spherical when their everyday experiences tell them it is flat.

The Mission Control Screen for the Earth World

The Round Earth Project: Deep Learning in a Collaborative Virtual World

This paper presents an overview of the Tele-Immersion applications that have been built by collaborators around the world using the CAVERNsoft toolkit, and the lessons learned from building these applications. In particular, the lessons learned are presetned as a set of rules-of-tummb for developing tele-immersive applications in general.

CAVERNsoft

A Review of Tele-Immersive Applications in the CAVE&reg; Research Network

We assessed the effects of network latency and jitter on a cooperative tele-operation task in a collaborative virtual environment. Two remote partners worked together to manipulate shared virtual objects over a network. The task was to minimize the time to transfer a ring through one of four paths with the least number of collisions.  The performance of human subjects was measured and analyzed quantitatively as a function of network latency: 10 and 200 msec delyas with and without jitter. Jitter had the greatest impact on coordination performance when the latency was high and the task was difficult. These results are discussed in light of current and future CVE tasks.

A Cooperative Tele-Operative Task in a Networked Virtual Environment

Effects of Network Characteristics on Human Performance in a Collaborative Virtual Environment

&ldquo;The Virtual Mail Systems&rdquo; was included in the Poster session of the IEEE VR &rsquo;99 Conference.

The Virtual Mail System

Integrated Vision System for Virtual Factory

Assembly Planning Effectiveness Using Virtual Reality

Tele-Immersion is the combination of collaborative virtual reality and audio / video teleconferencing. With a new generation of high-speed international networks and high-end virtual reality devices spread around the world, effective trans-oceanic tele-immersive collaboration is now possible. But in order to make these shared virtual environments more convenient workspaces, a new generation of desktop display technology is needed.

User at ImmersaDesk2 Interacting with Live Video Avatar

Next-Generation Tele-Immersive Devices for Desktop Trans-Oceanic Collaboration

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 (and other) devices.

Viewing Volume in World Coordinate System

Transparently Supporting a Wide Range of VR and Stereoscopic Display Devices

We present a technique to obtain texture-mapped models of real scenes with a high degree of automation using only a video camera and an overhead projector. The user makes two passes with a hand-held video camera. For the first pass the scene is under natural illumination, and a structure-from-motion technique recovers coarse scene geometry and textures. For the second pass a grid of lines is projected onto the scene which allows us to acquire dense geometric information. The information from both passes is automatically combined and a final model consisting of the dense geometry of the scene and a properly registered texture is created.