From: banks@cs.unc.edu (David Banks) Subject: UNC Virtual Reality at Siggraph Date: 24 Jul 91 20:24:42 GMT Message-ID: <3571@sun13.scri.fsu.edu> The Computer Science Department at UNC-Chapel Hill will be a major exhibitor at Siggraph's "Tomorrow's Realities Gallery" next week in Las Vegas. If you attend Siggraph, you are invited to stop by the booth. This article describes the demo procedures, the demos, and the equipment at UNC's booth. ===================================================================== == D E M O P R O C E D U R E == ===================================================================== Siggraph has approved several demos, which are described briefly in the next section. Each demo lasts about four minutes, so we will have a ticket dispenser to avoid generating long lines. Take a ticket, mill around the showroom floor, and return in time to hear your number called. If ticket-holders before you miss their turn, your number will be called sooner; as a result, there is no guarantee which particular demo you will get. The gallery hours during Siggraph are indicated in the schedule below. 9 10 11 Noon 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Sun 7/28 ------ Mon 7/29 ---------------------------- Tue 7/30 ------------------------------- Wed 8/01 ------------------------- Thu 8/02 ------------------------------- Fri 8/03 ---------------- The basic plan of the demos is simple. You don the head-mounted display. As you turn your head or move about, the scene you see changes to present an illusion of reality. You might use a 3d input device to interact with the virtual environment. And you might hear audio feedback depending on where you are in that environment. There will be handouts available with details about the demos and the machinery. If you read them first, you can spend more of your demo time using the application, and less time needing help. ===================================================================== == D E M O S == ===================================================================== Radiation Therapy Treatment Planning A virtual patient lies on a virtual table. You can see through the patient's torso to the tissues beneath, and can grab and emplace radiation beams so that they destroy malignant cells without hurting healthy ones. Flying Through Molecules This demo gives you and atom's-eye view of several molecules. You can fly around them at variable rates of speed. 3dm: A Two-Person Modeling System You share this environment with a trained user who, as the expert modeller, builds 3-dimensional objects that you can explore. The modeller selects tools from an iconic virtual menu in order to create and edit objects. Mountain Bike A physical bicycle acts as an input device for this application. As you pedal the bike, you ride through a virtual landscape furnished with several animated surprises. Virtual Pilot You fly over an endless textured landscape, navigating by looking in the direction you want to go. Architectural Walkthrough Using a treadmill as the input device, you walk through a house. This demo features audio cues, illumination by radiosity, and many textured surfaces in order to enhance realism. Another version of this demo uses a prototype tracking system (more details below) to let you explore a single room. ===================================================================== == E Q U I P M E N T == ===================================================================== Pixel-Planes 5 Pixel-Planes 5 is a custom graphics multicomputer. It consists of a host, dozens of graphics processors (GPs), and several pixel-oriented renderers, communicating over a ring network. Each GP (an i860) typically transforms and clips a portion of a database of 3-D objects, and sends instructions to the renderers. Each renderer is an array of 128x128 SIMD pixel processors with local memory. They execute instructions of the form [instruction, ABCDEF], where the processor for the pixel at screen-location (x,y) applies the instruction to the quadratic Ax + By + C + Dx^2 + Exy + Fy^2. A renderer can illuminate, shade, texture, and z-buffer a primitive at all its pixels in parallel. Existing applications demonstrate interactive radiosity, interactive volume-rendering, interactive procedural textures, interactive Mandelbrot and Julia sets, and Phong-shaded polygonal models tranformed and rendered at over 2 million polygons per second. Head-Mounted Display The head-mounted display is a piece of headgear with two TV screens, one for each eye. With a 3-D input device mounted on it, this display can show images that move as you move, creating the illusion that you are in a virtual world that the graphics engine renders. Current research at UNC has spawned another method of tracking the position and orientation of the headgear: the "Head-Tracker." This technology uses infrared emitters placed overhead, and multiple sensors on the headgear. The result is a larger physical volume of space that the user can move about in, and less lag in computing the user's position and orientation. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Disclaimer: This article is not an official publication of the University of North Carolina, nor of the Department of Computer Science. comp.graphics.research Administrivia to: graphics-request@scri1.scri.fsu.edu