IIS: Effectively Harnessing Virtual Environments Technology for Visualization and Design

University Of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Minneapolis MN

Investigators

Abstract

In this project, the PI will lead an interdisciplinary team in a quest for fundamental insights into how to effectively harness the full potential of virtual reality technology for visualization and design. The specific focus of the research will be on architectural applications. Within this context, the PI will seek to enable accurate and intuitive spatial understanding of large, immersive 3D virtual environments presented both via head mounted displays and on large projection screens. For environments presented via a head mounted display, the PI will explore how the accuracy of the user's spatial perception and sense of presence is affected by factors such as: providing a faithful representation of the user's body; providing low latency visual and haptic feedback about the sizes and distances from the user of tracked objects that co-exist in both the real and virtual environments; and providing spatialized 3D ambient sound cues. For information presented via a stereoscopic large screen rear-projection system, the PI will explore how the viewer's ability to attain a maximally accurate intuitive spatial understanding of an interior or exterior is impacted by questions such as: the importance of presenting people with an image of a scene that is generated from a viewpoint that is as close as possible to their own eye position, both laterally and in distance from the ground; the conditions under which the viewer is likely to adopt an interpretation of size and distance relationships in a virtual environment shown via a projection system that is based on the assumptions that underlie interpretations of size and distance in pictures, as opposed to interpretations of size and distance in directly viewed scenes; and whether, when considering display on a large screen, bigger is always better, or if the maximum benefit comes from displaying a scene at "life size" with the possibility that negative consequences might arise from displaying things too large. The PI will further explore the design and evaluation of improved metaphors for enabling intuitive locomotion through very large scale immersive virtual environments, as well as the effective use of abstraction for the representation of uncertain or ambiguous information in such environments. Broader Impacts: This work will lead to basic observations and rules of thumb derived from careful human subjects experiments that will inform a broad range of research efforts involving the use of virtual environments, in such domains as scientific and information visualization, situational awareness, and diversity training. It will also result in improvements in architectural education stemming from the effective use of virtual environment technology to teach fundamental concepts in visual imagination and integration of an egocentric perspective into the earliest stages of the design process.