Virtual Reality and stereo setup for education

[foremansci]

Hello

I'm excited that I've been allowed to join the Avizo discussion forum. We have just installed a stereo projection system in our school. The school is a state school with 2400 students, aged 11-19.

We saw the system at an exhibition (BETT 2008) in London and from that moment on we have worked hard to secure the installation. We have built a dedicated cinema for this project.

At first the demo files were mind blowing ...but we need to move on. I have a number of questions:

1. Can we build our own content? How do we go from blank canvas to viewing a 3-D object in the cinema?

2. Can we do any of the design stages on standard PCs or i-Macs? This is very important because students can work in ICT suites before booking the cinema for presentation of their work?

3. Where can we source more content for courses such as A level Biology, Chemistry, Physics etc?

These are my questions for starters. Looking forward to your answers.

[sgiblin]

Hello foremansci,

I have responded in private to your message, giving you details of your local representative in the UK who will be glad to discuss your requirements further with you.

Best regards,

Steve Giblin
Application Engineer

http://3dviz.mc.com

[Daniel Lichau]

Avizo is a great tool for showing 3D and scientific contents on large display, tiled displays, 'cinema' or theaters displays, up to immersive virtual reality systems like CAVEs.

1. Can we build our own content? How do we go from blank canvas to viewing a 3-D object in the cinema?


You can easily load data, attach visual representations and save sessions for further demos. You can also define animation sequences using the DemoMaker module. You can also record movies from that.
A demo framework can be used to define demo sequences, and demo menus.

2. Can we do any of the design stages on standard PCs or i-Macs? This is very important because students can work in ICT suites before booking the cinema for presentation of their work?


You can prepare demos on a desktop system, then play it on 'cinema' displays. You will typically prepare a data/display module set and save the module network as "pack & go", then include your demo in a demo sequence or menu.

3. Where can we source more content for courses such as A level Biology, Chemistry, Physics etc?


Avizo already contains a number of demos. You may build demo starting from data that can be loaded in Avizo, such as image stacks, 3D scenes or models such as VRML files, numerical simulation results... You may possibly contact Mercury for further demo contents depending on your purpose and events. This forum is also intended to publish and exchange content.


Daniel

[foremansci]

We have been quiet for a couple of months whilst we installed the final permanent projector. This has now been completed giving us High Definition, widescreen projection.

Even though we have had the install company on-site on two occasions I am still not convinced we have the system working properly.

The 3-D image seems to be deeper 'behind' the screen and not projecting 'off' the screen in to the room. I have checked on the 2D/3D button on the Avizo screen to ensure the first two boxes are ticked.

Can you think of any reason why we are not getting the forward depth?

[Daniel Lichau]

Avizo XScreen supports active/passive stereoscopy.

If you defined tiled screens with tileOrigin/tileSize in the VR configuration file, the stereo can be controlled interactively with VRSettings stereo ports. The "zero parallax balance" controls the appearant scene position relative to the screen. See User's Guide section 8.1.4.1.

If you defined 'immersive' screens with upper/lowerLeft/Right corners in the VR configuration file, the view is controlled either by the head tracking or, if tracking is not enabled, by the default eye position defined in configuration file. Correct stereo display requires either that the head tracking is enabled and correcly calibrated, or that head tracking is disabled and the oberver is "close enough" to default camera position.

Then the appearant position of the scene relative to the screen simply depends on actual scene coordinates relative to screen coordinates (the "world"), combined with "navigation" (scene offset/rotation) that can be controlled with a wand or the mouse. When navigating with the mouse in the 3D viewer, the viewer camera location is converted to scene transform relative to the world/screens.
Notice that the eye offset can be controlled interactively in the VRSettings module.

On Windows, you can enable stereoscopy in the display control panel if you have a quadro board for instance. It is not fancy on a laptop but enough for checking. Of course for actual steroscopic viewing you need using for instance anaglyph red/cyan with Open Inventor viewer builtin stereo, where you can possibly play also with parallax balance.

Here is a summary of the ways to change appearant depth of the scene relative to the screens:

When using Open Inventor builtin stereo (viewer popup menu), enable stereo and tune stereo balance
When using XScreen VR config with tiled screens (tileOrigin/Size), make sure stereo is enabled and use port "zero parallax balance'" (camera/eye offset may also need to be tuned for correct/comfortable display)
When using XScreen VR config with immersive screens (tileOrigin/Size) with tracking disabled, define consistent defaultCameraPosition and defaultObjectPosition in config file SoTracker section, also make sure that stereo is enabled of course
When using XScreen VR config with immersive screens (tileOrigin/Size) with tracking enabled, make sure that stereo is enabled, and that tracking is correctly callibrated.


The Avizo Users's guide contains troubleshooting guidelines (chapter XScreen VR Section 8.1.6).


Daniel

[JulietteKlonk]

Your article is really great and I truly enjoyed reading it.