IIS: Effectively Harnessing Virtual Environments Technology for Visualization and Design

在这个项目中，PI将领导一个跨学科团队，探索如何有效地利用虚拟现实技术的全部潜力进行可视化和设计。 研究的具体重点将是建筑应用。 在此背景下，PI将寻求实现对通过头戴式显示器和大型投影屏幕呈现的大型沉浸式3D虚拟环境的准确和直观的空间理解。 对于通过头戴式显示器呈现的环境，PI将探索用户的空间感知和存在感的准确性如何受到以下因素的影响：提供用户身体的忠实表示;提供关于在真实的和虚拟环境中共存的跟踪对象的大小和距离的低延迟视觉和触觉反馈;以及提供空间化的3D环境声音提示。 对于通过立体大屏幕背投系统呈现的信息，PI将探索观众如何通过以下问题获得对内部或外部最准确的直观空间理解的能力：向人们呈现从尽可能接近他们自己的眼睛位置的视点生成的场景的图像的重要性，在横向上和离地面的距离上;- 观看者可能在通过投影系统显示的虚拟环境中采用尺寸和距离关系的解释的条件，该投影系统基于作为图片中尺寸和距离的解释的基础的假设，与直接观看的场景中的大小和距离的解释相反;以及，当考虑在大屏幕上显示时，是否越大越好，或者如果最大的好处来自于以“真人大小”显示场景显示太大的东西可能会产生负面后果。 PI将进一步探索改进隐喻的设计和评估，以实现在超大规模沉浸式虚拟环境中的直观运动，以及在此类环境中有效使用抽象来表示不确定或模糊的信息。这项工作将导致基本的观察和经验法则来自仔细的人类受试者的实验，将告知广泛的研究在科学和信息可视化、态势感知和多样性培训等领域，努力使用虚拟环境。 它还将导致建筑教育的改进，因为它有效地利用虚拟环境技术来教授视觉想象中的基本概念，并将自我中心的观点融入设计过程的最初阶段。

In this project, the PI will lead an interdisciplinary team in a quest for fundamental insights into how to effectively harness the full potential of virtual reality technology for visualization and design. The specific focus of the research will be on architectural applications. Within this context, the PI will seek to enable accurate and intuitive spatial understanding of large, immersive 3D virtual environments presented both via head mounted displays and on large projection screens. For environments presented via a head mounted display, the PI will explore how the accuracy of the user's spatial perception and sense of presence is affected by factors such as: providing a faithful representation of the user's body; providing low latency visual and haptic feedback about the sizes and distances from the user of tracked objects that co-exist in both the real and virtual environments; and providing spatialized 3D ambient sound cues. For information presented via a stereoscopic large screen rear-projection system, the PI will explore how the viewer's ability to attain a maximally accurate intuitive spatial understanding of an interior or exterior is impacted by questions such as: the importance of presenting people with an image of a scene that is generated from a viewpoint that is as close as possible to their own eye position, both laterally and in distance from the ground; the conditions under which the viewer is likely to adopt an interpretation of size and distance relationships in a virtual environment shown via a projection system that is based on the assumptions that underlie interpretations of size and distance in pictures, as opposed to interpretations of size and distance in directly viewed scenes; and whether, when considering display on a large screen, bigger is always better, or if the maximum benefit comes from displaying a scene at "life size" with the possibility that negative consequences might arise from displaying things too large. The PI will further explore the design and evaluation of improved metaphors for enabling intuitive locomotion through very large scale immersive virtual environments, as well as the effective use of abstraction for the representation of uncertain or ambiguous information in such environments.Broader Impacts: This work will lead to basic observations and rules of thumb derived from careful human subjects experiments that will inform a broad range of research efforts involving the use of virtual environments, in such domains as scientific and information visualization, situational awareness, and diversity training. It will also result in improvements in architectural education stemming from the effective use of virtual environment technology to teach fundamental concepts in visual imagination and integration of an egocentric perspective into the earliest stages of the design process.