CRYSTAL: Spherical Fish Tank VR Display | Human Communication Technologies Laboratory

CRYSTAL display is a new interactive spherical 3D perspective corrected, and stereoscopic display system. The approach is based on fish tank virtual reality (FTVR) that uses stereo and head-coupled virtual reality on high-resolution desktop displays. However, our new class of FTVR display technology uses geometric shapes such as cubes and spheres, to create a contained virtual reality volume. Our distinct approach will allow the display to be manipulated for viewing and controlling a 3D scene from different perspectives by more than one person.

The display system is auto-calibrated via 3D reconstruction of each projected pixel on the display using a single inexpensive camera. With the automatic calibration, the multiple-projector system supports seamlessly blended imagery on the spherical screen. With the calibration, it is possible to create wall-papered imagery like the earth. Multiple viewers can walk around and visualise the seamless imagery on the sphere. Furthermore, we incorporate head tracking with the display to present 3D content with motion parallax by rendering perspective-corrected images. The viewer can naturally visualise 3D scenes within the sphere from arbitrary viewpoints.

As the system has been properly built, our work focuses on developing and evaluating techniques for 3D visualisation and interaction using the unique property of the spherical FTVR. We believe the spherical FTVR is a promising direction and can be a novel, disruptive technology for teleconferencing, art and design, collaborative visualisation for big data, gaming and computer-aided design (CAD) environments.

Videos

[youtube]https://youtu.be/mtPR57DEMY8[/youtube]

[youtube]https://youtu.be/w_5OZGEt6C8[/youtube]

[youtube]https://youtu.be/KVKyXYCttfA[/youtube]

Publications

https://research.hct.ece.ubc.ca/?p=547

Funding

We gratefully acknowledge our previous funding support from:

Contributors

[profilelist project = “Spheree”]