Hello, my name is Uwe Gruenefeld
on behalf of my coauthors
I welcome you to the presentation
of our paper titled
VRCeption: Rapid Prototyping of
Cross-Reality Systems in Virtual Reality.
Let us start by asking what
is a Cross-Reality System?
At its core, these systems offer
different degrees of virtuality to users.
So, this can either be a user who
is transitioning from Virtual Reality
to Augmented Virtuality,
for example, to integrate a physical keyboard
into the experience to allow typing,
or it can be
multiple users that experience
different levels of virtuality.
An example or two examples of
the latter one are shown here,
in which a bystander can interact
with a VR user.
On one side, we have face display
and on the other side we have ShareVR.
So, the basic idea here is that we want
to bridge the gap that is introduced
by the Virtual Reality head-mounted display
by employing additional displays
and projections that allow
bystanders to see what's going on
and give opportunities for bystanders
to engage in the VR experience.
Nevertheless,
the problem is that prototyping these
Cross-Reality Systems is rather difficult.
On one side,
it is very time consuming to build
these systems. On the other side,
it requires software and
hardware prototyping expertise.
So to address this problem,
we propose our VRCeption concept.
The idea is to simulate different realities
and transition between these realities
completely inside of Virtual Reality.
So in other words,
we suggest to simulate the entire
Reality-Virtuality Continuum in Virtual Reality,
and thereby allowing users to
quickly and collaboratively
prototype Cross-Reality Systems.
To demonstrate our concept,
we implemented the VRception toolkit.
It provides two different
environments for prototyping.
There's Unity3D on one side,
and there is a what you see is what you
get editor directly in Virtual Reality
on the other side.
So while prototyping in Unity3D
allows high customizability
with well known functionality,
the VR editor provides a simple
to use prototyping solution.
The interesting part here is
that people with expertise in
graphics programming or with Unity3D,
for example,
can introduce this expertise
to the prototyping process.
While other people that don't have
a background in computer graphics
or don't know how to program can
directly engage with the VR editor.
So, let me show this VR editor
in a little bit more detail here.
When a user enters our VRception toolkit,
the VR editor of it,
they are immersed in a simulation
of the Reality-Virtuality Continuum.
A menu attached to the controller
allows users to transition on
the continuum and experience
the different manifestations.
Moreover,
the menu contains different prefabs
that users can add to the simulation
to prototype Cross-Reality Systems.
Here, we show how to quickly replicate
the fundamental concept of the
FaceDisplay system using our toolkit.
So, to better understand the potential
of the VRception concept and toolkit,
we replicated six different Cross-Reality Systems
proposed in previous work.
Following a brief literature review,
we identified three different categories in
which these systems can be classified.
So, on one side, we have XR to the real world.
We have the real world to XR and we
have bidirectional systems that work
both ways. For each of the three
categories, we selected two systems and
re-implemented them using our toolkit.
The original system is visible in
the right half of the picture and
our re-implementation is visible
in the left half of the picture.
To get a better understanding how
these reimplementations look like,
let us take a closer look.
Here, you can see the multiplayer
ShareVR system.
And here the keyboard fading into
virtuality for A Dose of Reality.
And finally, the VR user's face
as demonstrated by TransparentHMD.
Following our reimplementations,
we conducted expert interviews
with the authors of the
reimplemented systems via Zoom.
During the interviews,
experts could experience the
prototypes in VR using our toolkit.
We had same structured interviews
with the experts to find out more
about their impression of our
toolkit and also their experience with
prototyping Cross-Reality Systems.
The experts highlighted that our
reimplementation replicated the core
functionalities of their systems.
Moreover, they saw great potential to
overcome limitations with our approach.
Here, they basically mentioned they were not
bound to currently existing hardware anymore.
But they could kind of think of solutions
that might not be possible at the moment,
but might be feasible in
a couple of years.
Finally,
they mentioned that with our
system remote collaboration between
researchers and developers is possible.
This is especially interesting given
the still ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
So to conclude my talk,
let us quickly sum up.
I presented the VRception concept
which proposes to simulate the
entire Reality-Virtuality Continuum
inside of Virtual Reality.
After that, I introduced our
VRception toolkit,
which allows rapid prototyping
of Cross-Reality Systems.
Additionally,
I demonstrated the reimplementation of
six previously proposed Cross-Reality Systems
and findings from our expert
interviews with the original authors.
We saw a lot of potential for
our toolkit and concept to help
with prototyping or rapidly prototyping
Cross-Reality Systems.
For everyone interested,
our toolkit is available for free on GitHub.
Just follow the QR code that
is presented here.
Thank you for listening to my talk
and please do not hesitate to contact
me if you have any further questions.
Thank you very much.