Research: Virtual Reality

When I joined the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) in 2000, I was a member of the Scientific Visualization and Virtual Environments Group, and worked extensively with immersive virtual reality systems. Contrary to popular use of the term "virtual reality," the systems we worked with were million dollar facilities that combined stereoscopic imagery (images appear to float in space in front of you), full 6DOF head tracking (you can physically stoop down to look under something and the camera angles adjust accordingly), full 6DOF hand tracking (you can reach out and "grab" a virtual object and physically move your hand around in the air in front of you to move the object), and full positional soundfields. I also planned and oversaw NCSA's participation in the University of Illinois' Engineering Open House for several years, selecting applications and preparing presentations that could convey the complexities and potential of virtual reality to engineers and the general public alike.

Extensive experience with CAVELib, FreeVR, and other virtual reality software frameworks.
Extensive experience with CAVE™, ImmersaDesk™, and HMD hardware environments.
Built from scratch a massively-parallelized VR library for handling massive-scale VR environments. Pipelined graphics rendering environment took advantage of hardware implementation of OpenGL on SGI systems.
Extensive experience translating user interfaces to utilize natural human interactions with virtual environments.

I also developed ShadowLight-Mirage, a virtual reality application that allowed the creation and exploration of fully immersive worlds in virtual reality. It was the basis for two projects with the US Army Corps of Engineers and was used for almost three years in a UIUC senior and graduate level architectural design course and in an outreach program with a local middle school. It was one of the first mixed-mode virtual reality "design" applications that permitted both structured architectual design and freehand artistic creation, including an advanced plugin "operating system" architecture. My work with the University of Illinois School of Architecture using these applications became the basis for the wider thrust of incorporating virtual reality in the arts at the University.

ShadowLight-Mirage

ShadowLight-Mirage.
ShadowLight-Mirage: A New Era in Visual Communication. Overview of the ShadowLight-Mirage immersive virtual reality CAVE application for architectural design.
Architectural Design in Immersive Virtual Reality. With Emma Smith. Visualization and Virtual Environments Group, National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
ShadowLight: A Flexible Architecture for Immersive Rapid Prototyping and Design. Audio/Video Production, Visualization and Virtual Environments Group, National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. July 7th, 2004. Video Production: Jeff Carpenter

Conference Publications

ShadowLight: A Flexible Environment for Multipurpose Design and Evaluation. IS&T / SPIE International Symposium on Electronic Imaging Science and Technology, San Jose, California, January 16-20, 2005. [Presentation Slides]
ShadowLight: A Flexible Architecture for Immersive Rapid Prototyping and Design. SIGGRAPH 2004, Los Angeles, California, July 7-12, 2004. [Abstract] [Video]

University Publications

Tiled Display Wall Information Pamphlet. Visualization and Virtual Environments Group, National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. March 9th, 2002.
Technologies of SciVis/VR Information Pamphlet. Visualization and Virtual Environments Group, National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. March 8th, 2002.
Applications of SciVis/VR Information Pamphlet. Visualization and Virtual Environments Group, National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. March 6th, 2002.
ImmersaDesk2 Information Pamphlet. Visualization and Virtual Environments Group, National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. February 26th, 2001.
CAVE Information Pamphlet. Visualization and Virtual Environments Group, National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. February 26th, 2001.