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Graphics Software Technology Science

3D Virtualization Edges Toward the Mainstream 80

Posted by timothy from the oh-yes-it's-nearly-virtual dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "With recent improvements in graphic cards and in powerful Linux-based PC clusters, virtual 3D prototypes are rapidly replacing actual physical prototypes in a wide range of industries, including early adopters such as aerospace or car companies. But now, software designers are also incorporating sound and tactile feedbacks to their Virtual Reality (VR) systems for real product development. In this long article, Desktop Engineering gives several examples of these new VR developments. But even if PC clusters and off-the-shelf graphic cards are cheap, a state-of-the-art VR facility such as an immersive CAVE can still cost more than one million dollars, because you need to build the viewing facility and buy expensive projection systems. However, costs are still decreasing and virtual prototyping is reaching the mainstream stage. This overview contains selected excepts and comments."
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3D Virtualization Edges Toward the Mainstream More

3D Virtualization Edges Toward the Mainstream

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  • Medical and high end design have seemed to be the exclusive realm of good VR, where is the promised VR for the masses that's beyound 800x600 res?

    • Re:toys for the boys? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Fjornir ( 516960 )
      Best bang-for-buck I've seen for home VR is a pair of shutter glasses. Basically the way it works if you have an LCD in front of each eye -- and in software the system renders a left eye image, and the glasses blank out your right eye -- then vice versa (syncing is handled by hooking the glasses inline between your monitor and your video card). I have the VR Visualizers from http://www.vrex.com/ [vrex.com] ) and they're pretty cool.

      However: the DepthCharge plugin they have for viewing 3D content in a webpage Just Pl

      • Re:toys for the boys? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by pmjordan ( 745016 ) on Sunday March 13, 2005 @04:45PM (#11928098)
        A friend of mine has shutter glasses, and they really didn't do much for me when I tried them. The constant flickering - remember, you now only have half the refresh rate - gave me a headache, and the sense of depth was very weak.

        I suggest that before buying shutter glasses, one should check these things. I know I'm very sensitive to flickering, anything below 85Hz is useless to me. In "real-world" seeing I don't work off the stereoscopic vision for depth perception, I expect that this causes the weak improvement. (You can test this easily by closing one eye for an extended period of time. Some people start "grabbing air", while others just carry on as normal)

        ~phil

        • Re:toys for the boys? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Fjornir ( 516960 )
          phil,

          Very valid points, all of them. It sucks that they didn't work for you, but for me -- the "did it" after a fair amount of tweaking. The pitch-black room was the thing that helped the most for me -- that reduced the sensation of flickering and increased the depth and rise a lot. I actually wish my glasses were full goggles because I think most of the flicker I experience now is because even when my eye is "blacked" I'm still seeing ambient light from the monitor.

          Tweaking the refresh rate was very im

          • Sorry, I don't know whether they had the scanline blanking capability. I suspect that even if they did, the owner didn't know about it. I don't quite understand how this feature is works, I'd appreciate it if you could explain it in a bit more detail. Surely only outputting every other scanline would essentially make the picture a bit darker, but not change much else? Or is this intended to combat some kind of after-glow effect of the phosphorus?

            Do note that my last try with this was a couple of years ago,
    • With cheap projectors, polarizing filters, and some of the tracking systems I've seen recently, you could probably produce a decent immersive VR system for a few thousand dollars. The real problem, I think, is that such systems are rather difficult to configure and program for.. Plug: I've been working in a fairly low-budget lab to develop an open source framework for handling projectors and trackers. We'll be presenting at I3D this year :) Forgive me if I'm a little hesitant to post a link to our work ..

  • ROLAND PIQUEPAILLE (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TrumpetPower! ( 190615 ) <ben@trumpetpower.com> on Sunday March 13, 2005 @04:09PM (#11927871) Homepage

    Please, people, let's not feed him. We've got enough whores 'round here already.

    Cheers,

    b&

    • We've got enough whores 'round here already.

      You happen to be talking about those ipod-sig-whores ?
      Ohwait...

      • Heh.

        Fuck the iPod siggers. Free gmail invites to the first 48 people to mail me. See sig for address.

      • I browse without sigs, which annoys me when idiots (many) PASTE thier sigs into the comments (I have wondered to myself how much people get away with in thier sigs...). Keep it in the sig, and let me decide to see it, otherwise ifyou paste it as part of you comment (not sig) then it is offtopic for you, or over-rated or even troll.

        I hate ipod-sig-whores. Check out my sig though, I think you will like it! :-)
    • I'm afraid I don't understand, please elaborate. It seems like he puts together content that's interesting to the slashdot readership and this is a problem how?

      • Re:ROLAND PIQUEPAILLE (Score:5, Informative)

        by Tim C ( 15259 ) on Sunday March 13, 2005 @05:34PM (#11928367)
        Initially at least, every single story he submitted consisted of a brief overview of the actual story, and a link to his blog. His blog contained a brief overview of the story, and a link to the actual story. Now, after months of complaints, he includes a link to the story in the slashdot summary too. If you google on his name, you'll find that he's made a career out of this; he consults on driving traffic to websites and blogs.

        He is whoring for traffic for his blog, plain and simple. That would be fine, but his stories turn up here with such regularity that you could be forgiven for thinking that he works for slashdot. That would *also* be fine, but if it's the case, it really ought to be disclosed.

        A lot of people consider his stories (especially in the past, before he linked to the real story instead of just his blog) to be glorified adverts. Understandably, the people who subscribe so they don't have to see ads are a little upset at that.

        Finally, attached to every single story of his are a lot of posts complaining about him for the reasons above (amongst others), and yet the slashdot editors remain utterly silent on the matter. Sure, it's their site and we don't have to read it, but it would be nice to at least be acknowleged. No-one likes to feel ignored, especially paying subscribers (not that I am one, of course).

        • Re:ROLAND PIQUEPAILLE (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Fjornir ( 516960 )
          Well, I sincerely thank you for the reply and the reasonable tone you took in giving it. In all honesty I'd expected a bunch of flames an no one actually adressing the point.

          But... I just can't bring myself to care. I mean if there's some fellow who's making a buck submitting interesting and topical stories to slashdot... more power to him. Granted, instead of a slashdot user acount his name is linked to his website so I cannot readily tell if his previous submissions were worthwhile, but... This one at l

          • Makes one wonder if what this RoPi guy does isn't right, WTF are Slashdot editors doing when they post/approve his articles?

            As they obviously do, either there's something wrong with Slashdot editors or the guy's doing noting unethical.

      • Re:ROLAND PIQUEPAILLE (Score:5, Informative)

        by demachina ( 71715 ) on Sunday March 13, 2005 @08:44PM (#11929315)
        Here [thedarkcitadel.com] is a pretty good write up about why everyone hates Roland. He is basicly making a living by finding someone elses interesting article, submitting it to Slashdot and using it to generate ad revenue on his web site. He has improved lately since he actually links to the original article first and to his web site second. Used to be you were steered to his web site first I gather.

        Haven't checked myself but the writeup indicates that EVERY article he was submitting to Slashdot was being accepted which is a near impossibility unless he is recieving somekind of preferential treatement from Slashdot or its parent company.

        The worst case conspiracy theory is he is partnered with Slashdot, or its parent company, or he is sending a kickback from his ad revenues to Slashdot and they are in turn insuring every one of his submissions makes the front page.

    • Re:ROLAND PIQUEPAILLE (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I love how in so many of his recent submissions, he puts in a dig about how long and difficult to read the original articles are, just trying to get people to click on his "summary with pictures". Man, what an ass. Oh, thank you Roland, I would have had to actually read something if it weren't for whoring spamming you. Oh Roland, thank you for saving me from that long and painful original article. Oh Roland, can you please go out and read more things for me and spam them to slashdot?

  • The people have spoken. Roland must die (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 13, 2005 @04:11PM (#11927888)
    Just look at the first 10 or so comments on this story. Slashdot readers clearly want him gone. Editors, LISTEN.
    • These are people with an agenda. Editors, ignore them. The silent majority enjoys the story, reads the summary, looks at pictures and follows the links. But people who enjoy the story do not feel the need to post messages supporting Roland, they just move on.
      • Don't speak for us please. I am what would be called the 'silent majority', and after reading up on him, I hate this 'Roland' person too.

        Also, slashdot and other 'blog'-type sites say they want to be taken as serious journalists like newspapers. In which case, newspapers have 'advertisement' above adverts, especially ones which are of the same format as normal articles, so slashdot should do the same for stories like this. If you want to be considered the same as the professionals then act accordingly. Yes

  • Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dhakbar ( 783117 ) on Sunday March 13, 2005 @04:11PM (#11927894)
    Only 1 of the first 8 posts didn't have something negative to say about Piquepaille.

    Why is that? Slashdot editors, take notice.
    • Slashdot "editors" don't care enough to edit typographical errors in story submissions or even check them to make sure they are factual at all. Why would they care what we mere mortals think about roland's submissions?
  • What about VRML? Develop more web sites as VRML!! That will show them!

  • 3D printers (Score:5, Informative)

    by wormbin ( 537051 ) on Sunday March 13, 2005 @04:12PM (#11927897)

    VR is cool but don't forget that you can get a similar rapid prototype benefit from 3D printers [3dsystems.com].

  • I think this technology will really take off once it can produce shapes using latex, gel, or rubber. And you can go into a booth and have something made anonymously. Once people figure out there are sexual applications to this ... well, the "Make-A-Dildo" software will be more popular than TurboTax in March. I'm only half kidding.

  • CaveUT (Score:3, Interesting)

    by El_Muerte_TDS ( 592157 ) on Sunday March 13, 2005 @04:13PM (#11927904) Homepage
    I always liked CaveUT: http://www.planetjeff.net/ut/CaveUT.html [planetjeff.net]
    a CAVE system that uses the UnrealEngine (even UT2004)

    • Re:CaveUT (Score:3, Funny)

      by jericho4.0 ( 565125 )
      Thank you! What a great way to enjoy $2,000,000 worth of hardware! I was starting to feel stupid for buying that thing.

      • But you can set yourself up with CaveUT for about $4000 per screen. Or for nothing if you can borrow some standard LCD projectors and PCs for the weekend. ;-)
  • While it's great that this technology is now so much easier to implement in larger companies, manufacturers, etc. ("I see a broad extension of the technology for multiple purposes, including data sharing inside companies and with suppliers. Everyone, everywhere will have access to excellent visualization that has ever-better graphics." ) but what research is being done in terms of the recreational applications for this VR? ie. Holodecks.
  • i just want to know at what point will this come to the masses so i can finally live out the american dream of killing my idiot boss.....

  • The one thing I remember from graphics class (Score:4, Informative)

    by antifoidulus ( 807088 ) on Sunday March 13, 2005 @04:21PM (#11927953) Homepage Journal
    Just make sure your VR has a low latency. If people in a VR world turn but the world does not turn fast enough, a lot of them will vomit.
    • VR has a lot of obstacles that probably won't be overcome until a Matrix-like neural interface is invented. There are too many ways a person's senses betray them in present VR simulations. IIRC the vomit problem is caused by your sense of balance/motion (in the inner ear) in disagreement with your visual sense of motion. Some sensitive people get ill watching a video clip of riding a roller coaster!
  • I can see myself take a shotgun to supporters of EU patents in life-like 3D? Where do I sign up??
  • This seems to be a general trend in most advanced Vis/Graphics fields.

    The costs associated with building a CAVE aren't really changing, it's still "about $1,000,000", but the amount that the money gets you is increasing at a huge rate.

    Cheap clusters, better screens, more hardware. It's all becoming commodity as people keep pushing the edge.

    I guess it's just moore's law applied on a broader scale, but I still find it interesting that most Universities and research labs aren't choosing to build "same tech
    • The universities doing the research (UIC and a couple others for the original CAVE) already have "same tech" and it is "paid for already." Their goal is to come up with something better than what they have. They can leave it up to industry to drive down the prices for the technology while they innovate.

  • Article - Roland Piquepaille (Score:5, Informative)

    by Zakabog ( 603757 ) <.moc.guamj. .ta. .nhoj.> on Sunday March 13, 2005 @04:45PM (#11928097)
    Here's a link to the article [deskeng.com] without supporting the whore, errr Roland Piquepaille
    • Mod parent up - I think all piqupailles articles should have a link IN THE SUBMISSION to original documents without his windshield wiping commentary. Plus a warning that visiting a link supports this guys site.

      I just wondered why the link didn't work, then I remembered my own sig! hahhaha lol

      All slashdot articles which features the OSDN have a cool and transparent littled ditty that /. is part of the OSDN.

      I asked the advertisers to suspend his account for copyright infringment, to thier credit they did
    • Relax... This is slashdot, nobody RTFA anyway. :)

  • Roland (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Lord_Dweomer ( 648696 ) on Sunday March 13, 2005 @04:48PM (#11928115) Homepage
    This is a Roland article. Please do not help him generate ad revenue by visiting his site.

  • I interned with a group at NASA Langley which is working to use mostly off the shelf components to build a portable cave. They already have a more than working prototype, or did when I was there 2 years ago. Unfortunatly I do not remember prices, but I know for sure this was maxing at around $30,000. I don't have time to go hunting now, but here is a good jumping point: http://develop.larc.nasa.gov/projects/ [nasa.gov] Just google for nasa develop and cave
  • This is partially a shameless plug, but there is also some incredible things we can do with VR in terms of social science/psychology research.

    just image any research where you have to record video/audio and then hire a bunch of psych 1 students to encode what they see for analysis (which is EXREMELY BIASED). now with VR, we can just record the position/orientation of the subject and use statistical methods (i.e. SPSS+MatLab) to crunch numbers (completely unbiased). Where I work, we have come up with so

  • "In this long article" (Score:4, Informative)

    by tod_miller ( 792541 ) on Sunday March 13, 2005 @05:27PM (#11928341) Journal
    1383 words, by a freelance writer. Support her by reading her own work, not some abridged version. (don't click second link, it is just a traffic drive - if he wants to tell us what he thinks he can post a /. reply and click some /. ads)

    Read article un-abridged [deskeng.com] (it is getting better, the real link was first in the story)

    Guidelines for moderating sigs: If it is a sig that contains non-abusive content, ignore it. If the sig ISN'T actually a sig (cannot be turned off) then give it a -1 offtopic/over-rated/troll as applicable.

  • VR good for games, bad for business.... (Score:3, Informative)

    by MosesJones ( 55544 ) on Sunday March 13, 2005 @06:34PM (#11928698) Homepage

    I worked in an industry that used VR, you can probably guess which one if I say its not for entertainment. What we found was that for simulation elements and "gaming" it worked well, but for command and control type functions it was too much information to process and a flat 2D model worked better, the 3D model lead to things being missed as they were out of scope and also on periferal vision elements being given too much weight over the central image (the human eye reacts better to movement at the edges, its where the tigers are coming from).

    So great that its getting cheaper, but please god can all those "cool a VR desktop" people just have a think for a second. Maybe zoom out (ala the Mac and Looking Glass) to get your windows, or rotate (looking glass) but a full VR would be dreadful, we found users getting lost and disoriented as they tried to navigate unstructured information (and most people's directory structures are very unstructured).

  • Early Adopter Outlook (Score:3, Informative)

    by Chitlenz ( 184283 ) <chitlenz.chitlenz@com> on Sunday March 13, 2005 @07:10PM (#11928879) Homepage
    As the lead developer on a PACS system (this involves capture images for radiological diagnostics) we have been working to evolve a lot of these technologies and adapt them more towards desktop use. MRI in particular captures image data with volumetric depth and allows for relatively easy conversion to 3d volumetric models. Add some basic surface analysis and you get texture modelling of 3d surfaces in realtime, for instance Terarecon's Aquarius stations (http://www.terarecon.com) have the capability to use live data captured from a patient still in an MRI bore to allow the extraction of live models (as in watch your heart beat), and future versions will be able to 'live-simulate' heart attacks, etc. Terarecon is a competitor of ours, but their site has some cool examples =)

    For us, VR is an inevitablity, but CAVE environments are impractical. Today, we use high end (5MP) flat panels to lay out diagnostic workstations in something similar to the 'Minority Report' layout, minus the panel transparency. This guy (article author) is looking at VR applications essentially in researched industrial design, which is cool and all, but what's important to note is that in order for someone other than a labrat to be comfortable with the environment it has to become a lot more comfortable to the average guy. That is, VR needs to emulate life a lot better than it does today in its interfaces. Convincing a non-techie to put on ANYTHING (glove, helmet,etc.) ain't gonna happen for a workspace that will be used 12 hours a day by one person. The important thing missing still is ergonomics and practicality.

    The cool thing though, is that TRUE VR is very close to reality today, that is to say that we can very accurately (to the mm, soon to be to the micron) recreate a simulated space within you today, and use that data to effectively represent you on a computer. Its actually kinda creepy since when you texture a skull study it really looks like the person you scanned heh. I keep meaning to scan me and turn me into a Doom3 model (muahahaha).

    Anyway, good article, but not so relevant to the real world just yet IMHO. The best hope for entertainment VR is indeed still the CAVE systems. I dunno where they got 400k from, I can build a cave for around 20k, including everything. Maybe they included the cost of the building too or something.

    Just my 2cents -- chitlenz

  • Lighting designers have been doing this for some time as well. Programs such as Martin's Show Designer [martin.com] let the designer come up with the entire show on his/her home computer, saving enourmous amounts of money. When the show goes live, all the designer has to do is save a file and transfer it to the board and the show will look exactly as advertised! I also believe sound engineers are starting to use this technology as well to determine the acoustic properties of venues.
  • For those who are interested, keep your eyes on Duke University's web page over the next month or so. Our six-sided, fully-immersive VR environment is being installed during this time.
  • an immersive CAVE can still cost more than one million dollars
    One word: Breasts

    Anyone willing to chip in a few $? :)

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