Virtual Reality

In collaboration with Highlands Historic Consulting (HHC) and the National Monuments Foundation (NMF), IMTC has developed an innovative, immersive interaction experience for the Millennium Gate Philanthropy Gallery (on the lower floor of the Millennium Gate). Rodney Cook, Jr of the National Monuments Foundation was looking for someone capable of devising and delivering this full-gallery experience.

We have developed a software framework for the creation of live performance simulations by non-technologists. This is a toolkit for simulating various types of cultural performances using motion capture, 3D animation, virtual reality, and reactive agents. The software allows the developer to define the components of a performance such as actors, audience members, and venue using a standard score paradigm. The user interactions and reactive agent scripting can also be defined through this interface.

Tangible user interfaces (TUIs) can create engaging and useful interactive systems. However, along with the power of these interfaces comes challenges; they are often so specialized and novel that building a TUI system involves working at a low level with custom hardware and software. As a result the community of people that are capable of creating TUIs is limited.

Augmented Reality (AR) technology merges the physical and the virtual worlds and Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) systems (such as Second Life and World of Warcraft) allow people to communicate, collaborate, and play games with each other inside a 3D virtual world. Users would like to access these virtual worlds while they are out in the world, but the small screen and limited interfaces on mobile devices are insufficient for interacting with existing MMO systems.

Our MirrorWorld system combines virtual environments that are analogues of real physical locations with various content and information sources that have a spatial or location component. This MirrorWorld allows us to create applications that combine the virtual and physical worlds for mobile users. The goal is to allow groups of affiliated people (e.g. Georgia Tech football fans, Facebook friends, College of Computing researchers, visitors to Atlanta etc.) to create and consume location based augmented reality content.

Scott Robertson presented a paper entitled, Multiuser Collaborative Exploration of Immersive Photorealistic Virtual Environments in Public Spaces at the Human Computer Interaction International Conference (HCII 2009) in San Diego, July 19-24, 2009.

When the Georgia World Congress Center (GWCC) wanted to add a comprehensive virtual tour of their facilities to their web site, they turned to IMTC to create a QuickTime VR and Macromedia Shockwave based tour. The GWCC Virtual Tour was developed for both the World Wide Web (as a Macromedia Shockwave application) and as a standalone application (Windows executable) on CD-ROM.

IMTC demonstrated the Four Angry Men project and the Virtual Vaudeville project, while IMTC member center Biomedical Interactive Technology Center (BITC) demonstrated the System for Wearable Audio Navigation (SWAN) at the

On April 1, 2004 IMTC helped the Georgia Tech College of Computing in presenting a Virtual Groundbreaking ceremony for the new Christopher W. Klaus Advanced Computing Building. IMTC produced video of two students in a dialog about the promise of the new Advanced Computing building. At the end of the dialog, a detailed virtual model of the building appears as the camera pans the construction area where the building will be located.

Reality Check, a show aired on CBS, approached IMTC with the desire to add a virtual baseball bat swing into one of their shows.  IMTC used the PEAK Performance Motion Capture System (with four cameras) to collect data on the bat swing of a child appearing on the show.  The data was then applied to a computer model of a boy, with texture mapped children's clothing.  A virtual camera path was chosen to match up with the camera view used on the show, and the resulting animation dumped to tape.