Virtual Reality Goes Round

By Roland Piquepaille

The 'real' booth of the Fraunhofer Institute at the upcoming CeBIT 2005 will feature a brand new and unusual 'virtual' reality system. Instead of being surrounded by images, you'll play with the VR Object Display, a two meters tall cylindrical column with a diameter of 1.6 meters, which has been specifically designed for advertising, trade shows and presentations. The system includes eight off-the-shelf projectors and four mirrors in the lower portion of the column, and is controlled by 5 PCs using a special calibration software. The semitransparent viewing surface for the pictures is wrapped around the upper section of the column. You'll be able to interact with cars or buildings that don't exist yet like if they were holograms. It really looks as an impressive step in virtual reality technology. But read more...

Let's start with one quote from Ivo Haulsen, a scientist at the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Architecture and Software Technology FIRST.

"We have brought technology out of the darkness of the projection room. When modeling virtual objects, designers, architects and engineers will no longer be surrounded by three-dimensional images as before -- they can now install a true-to-life simulation in the display column, walk around it and work on it. This gives the impression that the object they are working on is a hologram," said Haulsen.

	Here is a picture of this digital advertising pillar "which allows to project still images, videos, panoramas and 3D objects" (Credit: Fraunhofer FIRST).
	And there is a second photograph showing a user "walking" around a building (Credit: Fraunhofer FIRST). This image comes from the VR Object Display brochure (PDF format, 2 pages, 80 KB, only downloadable -- not directly viewable).

Here is how the system works.

The new high-tech column is two meters tall, with a diameter of 1.6 meters. Examples of what the versatile virtual showcase can do include displaying cars that do not exist yet at trade fairs, showing movie trailers or sets from a stage production in cinema and theater foyers, or reproducing an antique vase for an exhibition. Moving images in luminescent colors grab the attention of passers-by, inviting them to immerse themselves in a world of color -- but not by vanishing through a hidden door in the display column, à la Orson Welles in the film classic "The Third Man."

The innards of the column comprise a combination of proven technology elements: eight off-the-shelf projectors and four mirrors are installed in the lower portion of the column to provide the rear-projection image. The semitransparent viewing surface for the pictures is wrapped around the upper section of the column. The column is controlled by five standard computers using sophisticated calibration software.

Finally, here are some quotes about the past and the future of virtual reality.

"We have now succeeded in projecting the image all the way around the entire column. Original three-dimensional Cave presentations were composed of projections on flat surfaces -- in this case, the light is projected onto the walls of the walk-through high-tech cube. In the next step, we were able to cast distortion-free images onto curved surfaces."

"Projecting onto semicircular screens, for example, produces skewed images, which we straighten back into shape using special software," says Haulsen, describing the development timeline. An automatic calibration system calculates and corrects distortions in the 360-degree projection, and quickly and precisely puts the pictures back together. Irregular coloring, brightness, unwanted overlaps and tedious fine adjustments are also things of the past.

The Fraunhofer scientists are continuing to develop the technology for multipurpose projection screens in different shapes. It seems there are no limits to what customers can ask for.

I would like to conclude this post with three observations.

In 'traditional' -- read 'cubic' -- virtual reality environments, the problems associated with coloring and calibration are hard to solve. If the researchers at FIRST have found solutions for such a new environment, it's really a breakthrough.

And if they want to invite me to the next CeBIT, which will be held from March 10 to 16 in Hannover, Germany, I'll be glad to accept.

Finally, if you want more information, here is the VR Object Display page describing the project, its roots and its future.

Sources: Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft news release, February 24, 2005; and various pages at the Fraunhofer Institute

Related stories can be found in the following categories.

• Displays
  
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• Graphics
  
• Virtual Reality
  
• Vision and Visualization