SensoramaLab
Sensorama is equiped with a 5x2m large stereosopic Cyviz Vizwall back-projection screen, a surround sound system, and sensors to track the users. Head mounted displays are also commonly used in VR simulations. We dispose of three Z800 3DVisor glasses. It is an affordable investment for potential partners willing to collaborate on VR applications. A custom mobile and variable sensitivity evaluation system allows to record and analyse experimentations or therapeutic sessions. It enables simultaneous use of up to seven infrared high sensitivity cameras to gain maximum information data from an ‘inhabited information space’. The Noldus Observer XT professional software package is used for the collection, analysis and presentation of observational data.

Technical overview:

• The projection system is a professional solution provided by Cyviz company. Our setup is made of two pairs of 1400×1050 projections side by side, with an overlap of 304 pixels; all in all, the screen is 2496×1050 px covering a 5×2 m area.
• This HMDs provides good quality pictures in SVGA (800×600) and integrates a 3DOF inertial tracker (head rotations). Good price/quality compromise. It supports sequential stereoscopic video signals. (eMagin 3D Visor Z800)
• Speech is common in multi-modal human-computer interaction. Writen in Java, this library allows to easily develop speech interfaces (key words, sequence in a dictionnary, etc). Unfortunately, it is provided only with American English language. (Sphinx 4 Speech recognizer)
• The VRPN library is used to connect VR devices such as magnetic sensors, spaceball, etc.(Virtual Reality Peripheral Network)
• Physics engines are used in virtual environment to simulate gravity and objects interactions, but also to control in a physically correct way the dynamics of navigation engines (magic carpet, airplane, etc.) (Bullet Physics Engine)
• 3D simulation programs have to generate images with the correct projections for each eye. The code of the Pulsar by Paul Bourke is a good tutorial and a good test bed for sensorama screen. (Stereoscopy with OpenGL)
• Originaly relased by Intel, OpenCV is the library we use for camera tracking. It provides all the basic features for image processing, tracking, and more. (Open Computer Vision Library)
• Although VR simulation often focus on graphics, audio have a great impact on user experience. A correct integration of sounds into space requires a correct management of stereo or surround, as well as the simulation of dynamics effects (Doppler) and room acoustics.