Immersive Virtual Reality

Abstract

Until recently, visual communication systems conveyed only two-dimensional, fixed field-of-view video information.  Although human viewers can acquire a certain degree of depth information from a 2-D video sequence, they mostly rely on disparities to develop a 3-D sense of the real world.  Traditional video fails to provide the viewer with a realistic sense of depth.  Furthermore, in existing 2-D video systems the transmitted field-of-view of the scene is fixed; the viewer is not allowed to "look around" in an environment.

The major goal of this research is to develop new techniques for creating a complete virtual environment.  The ultimate immersive virtual environment should provided three elements: (i) stereo vision, where each eye receives a different image according to its location ins space; (ii) complete 360 degree (panoramic) view, allowing the user to look in any desired location; (iii) video views in any direction.  None of the currently known applications is able to provide all three elements simultaneously.

The objective of this project is to capture multiple video sequences and generate stereo video panoramic views at video rates.  The transmission of such views is very bandwidth consuming, therefore requiring a compact representation of stereo panoramic data.  Development of appropriate compression algorithms is also an important goal of this project.

Students

• Stavros Tsavidas

• Peshala Pahalawatta