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IEEE VR 2009
ADVANCE PROGRAM

Workshops

Full day workshops


Half day workshops


Tutorials
Full day tutorials
  • Conducting Human-Subject Experiments with Virtual and Augmented Reality
    As virtual and augmented reality hardware and software have grown more mature over the past decade, the focus of the field has shifted away from the basic engineering technology, and towards the science and applications of VR and AR techniques. Increasingly, virtual and augmented reality researchers are conducting human-subject experiments, both to understand the way humans perceive, manipulate, and cognate with VR and AR information, and to quantify the utility of VR and AR in different application contexts.
    This tutorial is for researchers and engineers, working in the field of VR and AR, who wish to conduct a human-subject experiment. It will cover (1) the basic principles of experimental design and analysis, with an emphasis on human-subject experiments in VR and AR (Swan); (2) a "journalistic approach" to measuring human performance that organizes the activity around questions such as "Who? What? When? Where? How? and Why?" (Ellis); (3) the basic principals and techniques of psychophysics, along with examples of how they have successfully examined human perceptual performance in virtual environments (Adelstein); and (4) techniques and considerations for conducting user-based studies in VR and AR, using a VR 2007 paper as a detailed example (Gabbard).
    Presenters:
    J. Edward Swan II - Mississippi State University; Stephen R. Ellis - NASA Ames Research Center; Bernard D. Adelstein - NSAS Ames Research Center; Joseph L. Gabbard - Virginia Tech.

  • Hands On with Open/Free VR Packages
    New open and free tools for VR are coming out all the time, along with some more established tools. How to choose what to use? Come to this tutorial and try them out! This will be a "hands on" tutorial. Attendees must bring their own laptop with the software pre-installed. Software and installation instructions will be made available in advance of the conference so you can have it pre-installed and be ready to start learning right away. This tutorial is aimed at both those new to creating VR applications and more experienced users interested in trying out new software; however, participants are advised that there will be significant coding in parts of the tutorial. Participants should come prepared to write code in C/C++ and compile it on their laptop. Power outlets and network connections will be available. A portion of the day will be spent on VRJuggler with OpenSG, a portion on InstantReality, and a portion on inVRs.
    Presenters:

    OpenSG with VRJuggler section:
    Dirk Reiners, University of Louisiana, Lafayette; Carsten Neumann, University of Louisiana at Lafayette; Gerrit Vossat, Centre for Advanced Media Technology, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; Dioselin Gonzalez, University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

    InstantReality:
    Johannes Behr, Fraunhofer Institut für Graphische Datenverarbeitung in Darmstadt, Germany; Dirk Reiners, University of Louisiana at Lafayette

    inVRs:
    Christoph Anthes Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Austria; Roland Landertshamer, Institute of Graphics and Parallel Processing,Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Austria; Marina Lenger, Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Austria.

  • Hands On with Commercial VR Packages
    Interested in trying out some of those commercial tools but you just haven't found the time? Come to this tutorial and try them out for yourself! This will be a "hands on" tutorial. Attendees should bring their own laptop with the software pre-installed. Free/trial versions of the software will be made available in advance of the conference so you can have it pre-installed and be ready to start learning right away. Half the day (morning) will cover Virtools. The second half of this tutorial (afternoon) will cover the Vizard software from WorldViz. This tutorial is aimed at both those new to creating VR applications and more experienced VR users interested in trying out new software. Power outlets and network connections will be available.

    Additional information about Vizard: Vizard makes it very easy to interface with a wide range of virtual reality equipment such as HMDs and CAVEs, and supports other high-level functionality such as live avatars and clustering, all within an easy to use Python framework. It is recommended that attendees bring their own laptops and download a free trial of Vizard, however, we will show live demonstrations during the tutorial so a laptop is not required. This tutorial is aimed at users who are just getting started in the virtual reality area, as well as those who are expert users and are looking to see what unique functionality is possible using Vizard. Senior WorldViz staff will be available to answer any questions attendees have about Vizard.

    Presenters:

    Vizard section:
    Wayne Piekarski, WorldViz; Michael Schaletzki, WorldViz

  • Hands On with Physics Engines for VR
    This tutorial presents the different components required in physical-based simulations.
    The first half is organized as several presentations, whose aim is to introduce the basic algorithms and explain how simulations of increasing complexity can be computed, up to new state-of-the-art methods and their implementation. Covered topics include fundamental equations, numerical resolution and integration schemes, rigid and articulated bodies, deformable objects, fluids, collision processing, GPU-based computing. Practical examples are illustrated in several currently available toolkits, including the open-source SOFA framework (http://www.sofa-framework.org) and Bullet Physics Library (http://www.bulletphysics.com/).
    The second half is a practical hands-on session, where participants using their own computer can experiment with a set of prepared examples, such as increasingly complex environments with rigid objects, soft bodies and fluids. After short presentations introducing the main features and practical usage of the toolkits, they will try constructing their own scenes, combining or extanding the provided building blocs. Through this experience, they will be able to get a glimse of the challenges involved in creating stable interactive simulations, and gather a few important tips from experts.
    We previously presented some of these topics in the context of medical applications during the MMVR conference (February 2007 in Long Beach, USA), as well in several SOFA users workshops, the latest being held at ISBMS (July 2008 in London, UK). Courses in physical-based techniques are regularly help at SIGGRAPH, covering a specific topic such as Rigids (Barraff et. al. 1997), Fluids (Bridson et. al. 2007), Hair (Cani et. al. 2008), Real-Time Physics (Müller et. al. 2008). The content of the proposed tutorial will cover a broader scope and discuss latest developments, allowing attendees to see and understand what is currently possible to integrate physics within a virtual environment. We will focus on practical methods, as implemented in publicly available toolkits.
    Presenters:
    Jeremie Allard, INRIA; François Faure, Grenoble Universities; Erwin Coumans, Sony Computer Entertainment America;