Abstract
The emergence of inexpensive 3D-TVs, affordable input and rendering hardware and open-source software has created a yeasty atmosphere for the development of low-cost immersive systems. A low cost system (here dubbed an IQ-station), fashioned from commercial off-the-shelf technology (COTS), coupled with targeted immersive applications can be a viable laboratory instrument for enhancing scientific workflow for exploration and analysis. The use of an IQ-station in a laboratory setting also has the potential of quickening the adoption of a more sophisticated immersive environment as a critical enabler in modern scientific and engineering workflows. Prior work in immersive environments generally required special purpose display systems, such as a head mounted display (HMD) or a large projector-based implementation, which have limitations in terms of cost, usability, or space requirements. The alternative platform presented here effectively addresses those limitations. This work brings together the needed hardware and software components to create a fully integrated immersive display and interface system that can be readily deployed in laboratories and common workspaces. By doing so, it is now feasible for immersive technologies to be included in researchers’ day-to-day workflows. The IQ-station sets the stage for much wider adoption of immersive interfaces outside the small communities of virtual reality centers. In spite of this technical progress, the long-term success of these systems depends on resolving several important issues related to users and support. Key among these issues are: to what degree should hardware and software be customized; what applications and content are available; and how can a community be developed?
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Sherman, W., Craig, A.: Understanding Virtual Reality. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Francisco (2003)
Fenn, J., Raskino, M.: Mastering the Hype Cycle: How to Choose the Right Innovation at the Right Time. Harvard Business School, Boston (2008)
Prabhat, F.A., Katzourin, M., Wharton, K., Slater, M.: A Comparative Study of Desktop, Fishtank, and Cave Systems for the Exploration of Volume Rendered Confocal Data Sets. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 14, 551–563 (2008)
Bohrer, G., Longo, M., Zielinski, D., Brady, R.: VR Visualisation as an Interdisciplinary Collaborative Data Exploration Tool for Large Eddy Simulations of Biosphere-Atmosphere Interactions. In: Bebis, G., Boyle, R., Parvin, B., Koracin, D., Remagnino, P., Porikli, F., Peters, J., Klosowski, J., Arns, L., Chun, Y.K., Rhyne, T.-M., Monroe, L. (eds.) ISVC 2008, Part I. LNCS, vol. 5358, pp. 856–866. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)
Brady, R., Pixton, J., Baxter, G., Moran, P., Potter, C., Carragher, B., Belmont, A.: Crumbs: a virtual environment tracking tool for biological imaging. Biomedical Visualization 82, 18–25 (1995)
Johnson, C., Moorhead, R., Munzner, T., Pfister, H., Rheingans, P., Yoo, T. (eds.): NIH/NSF Visualization Research Challenges Report. IEEE Press, Los Alamitos (2006)
Sherman, W.R., O’Leary, P., Kreylos, O., Brady, R.: IEEE Visualization 2008 Conference Workshop on Scientific Workflow with Immersive Interfaces for Visualization. In: Sherman, W.R., O’Leary, P., Kreylos, O., Brady, R. (eds.) Proceedings of the IEEE Visualization 2008 Conference. IEEE Press, Columbus, OH (2008)
Johnson, A., Leigh, J., Morin, P., Van Keken, P.: GeoWall: Stereoscopic Visualization for Geoscience Research and Education. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 26, 10–14 (2006)
Lee, J.: Head Tracking for Desktop VR Displays using the WiiRemote (2007), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw
Kato, H., Billinghurst, M.: Marker Tracking and HMD Calibration for a Video-Based Augmented Reality Conferencing System. In: IWAR 1999: Proceedings of the 2nd IEEE and ACM International Workshop on Augmented Reality, Washington, DC, USA, p. 85. IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos (1999)
Kato, H.: ARToolKit (1999), http://www.hitl.washington.edu/artoolkit
Kreylos, O.: Environment-Independent VR Development. In: Bebis, G., Boyle, R., Parvin, B., Koracin, D., Remagnino, P., Porikli, F., Peters, J., Klosowski, J., Arns, L., Chun, Y.K., Rhyne, T.-M., Monroe, L. (eds.) ISVC 2008, Part I. LNCS, vol. 5358, pp. 901–912. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)
Sherman, W.: Commodity-Based Projection VR: Software for Virtual Reality. In: SIGGRAPH 2004: ACM SIGGRAPH 2004 Course Notes. ACM, New York (2004), http://freevr.org/
O’Leary, P., Sherman, W., Murray, A., Riesenfeld, C., Peng, V.: Enabling Scientific Workflows Using Immersive Microbiology. In: Sherman, W., O’Leary, P., Kreylos, O., Brady, R. (eds.) Proceedings of the IEEE Visualization 2008 Conference. IEEE Press, Columbus (2008), DVD
Darken, R., McDowell, P., Johnson, E.: Projects in VR: The Delta3D open source game engine. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 25, 10–12 (2005)
DeFanti, T., et al.: The Future of the CAVE. Central European Journal of Engineering (to appear, 2010)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Sherman, W.R., O’Leary, P., Whiting, E.T., Grover, S., Wernert, E.A. (2010). IQ-Station: A Low Cost Portable Immersive Environment. In: Bebis, G., et al. Advances in Visual Computing. ISVC 2010. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6454. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-17274-8_36
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-17274-8_36
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-17273-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-17274-8
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)