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ir. René Molenaar - Scientific Programmer |
Hi, my name is René Molenaar. I've finished my Research and Masters Thesis Projects for Msc. Media and Knowledge Engineering (see below). During these projects I added new features to our Virtual Reality library to support multiple users working at the same time.
Currently I am working on the VRmeer Project, a new version of our VR library on top of OpenSceneGraph
Main Focus: Collaboration in Virtual Environment
MSc. Thesis: Viewing and Interaction for Multiple Users in Projection-Based VR Systems
(april 2007)
Abstract:
In projection-based Virtual Reality systems, typically only one head-tracked user views stereo images rendered from the correct view position. Other users are presented a distorted image, moving with the first user’s head motion. The scene appears sheared and in some cases the users do not perceive the stereo effect. For these users it takes much effort to view and correctly interact with 3D objects in the virtual environment. If these objects are within close range of the users, and user positions are relatively far apart, the distortion effects are large. This is typically the case for close-range VR systems, such as the Virtual Workbench. On these systems, multi-user collaboration proves to be difficult. In this thesis, the problem is analysed with usability engineering methods. Easy to implement novel methods to prevent and reduce image distortion and its negative effects on interactive task performance are described. The screen can be split for multiple users, or a shared camera model can be used with compensation for remaining distortions. This way the overall distortion for each user is minimized, while important user-personal objects such as interaction cursors, rays and controls remain free of distortion. We performed qualitative and quantitative evaluation with a user experiment on our Virtual Workbench. Measuring improvements in quality and user performance under view distortion with and without the use of our methods. Our findings demonstrate the impact of view distortion on task performance and the positive effect on quality and performance our methods introduce. This indicates that our method can enhance the multi-user collaboration experience on close-range, projection-based VR systems, like the Virtual Workbench.
Download the PDF file :2007_renemolenaar_thesis.pdf
Main Interests
Virtual Reality and Interactive Entertainment
- Immersiveness
- Human Machine Interaction
- (Tele-) Collaboration
- (Tele-) Presence
Other Interests
- C++, Python
Cinema & Music
- (Card) Magic