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的基本见解。研究的具体重点将放在建筑应用上。在这种情况下，PI将寻求实现对通过头盔显示器和大型投影屏幕呈现的大型、身临其境的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；提供关于真实和虚拟环境中共存的被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将探索观众获得对室内或外部最准确的直观空间理解的能力如何受到以下问题的影响：向人们展示场景的图像的重要性，该场景是从尽可能靠近他们自己的眼睛位置的视点产生的，无论是横向上还是离地面的距离；观众在通过投影系统显示的虚拟环境中可能采用大小和距离关系的条件，该投影系统基于对图片中的大小和距离的解释所依据的假设，而不是直接观看的场景中的大小和距离的解释；当考虑在大屏幕上显示时，越大越好，或者是否最大的好处来自于以“真人大小”显示场景，因为显示的东西太大可能会产生负面后果。PI将进一步探索改进的隐喻的设计和评估，以实现在超大规模沉浸式虚拟环境中的直观移动，以及在此类环境中有效地使用抽象来表示不确定或模糊的信息。广泛影响：这项工作将导致从仔细的人体受试者实验中获得基本观察和经验法则，这些实验将为涉及使用虚拟环境的广泛研究工作提供信息，如科学和信息可视化、情景感知和多样性培训。它还将改善建筑教育，因为有效地利用虚拟环境技术教授视觉想象中的基本概念，并将以自我为中心的观点融入设计过程的早期阶段。

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.