THE VIRTUAL REALITY PLATFORM

Motivations

In the new part of the INRIA building, a 160 m² area is dedicated to a Virtual Reality Platform. This project aims to focus the different actors of the " new information technologies " in the region of Grenoble. It will be a high-performance tool, allowing to :

• use a determining technological advancein order to finalize the local teams' research works on modeling, rendering, animation and real-time exploration of 3D virtual worlds
  
  
• tackle new issues : sound simulation and sound/image integration, shadows between virtual and real worlds, " hard " interfaces (6DOF sensors) as well as " soft " ones (menus, 3D widgets), as mixed ones (force feedback), scenes simplification and complex data processing, etc.)
  
  
• share knowledge, study distributed graphical visualization problems on a large scale, with distant teams in the region (Saint-Etienne, Lyon), in France (Rennes, Nancy), or over the world (Naples, Vienne), as well as with industrial partners.

Equipment

The area was divided into several specific rooms :

• Une Immersive Film Theater. The cylindrical screen (4m radius, 3m in height, 150°) allows a comfortable visualization for a small group of people. Three stereoscopic video projectors are necessery to feed the system.
• Auxiliary light sources, speakers with 3D sound option, glasses allowing to perceive the relief and the distance will create an atmosphere around the projected image.
• A " blue " studio (stage lighting, two cameras) to film one or two charcaters, and superimpose them into a 3D virtual scene.
• A room dedicated to a workbench equipped with an haptic device (SPIDAR) in order to use force feedback.

Several devices dedicated to interaction in virtual and augmented reality have been acquired or foreseen: position/orientation trackers (MotionStar, and Optotrak type), stereo glasses, force feedback arm (Phantom type), immersive head mounted displays, etc.

On the beginning of the year 2001, the SGI graphical super computer evolved towards an Onyx3400 machine, 12 processors and 3 graphical pipes. This computer is able, thanks to its software components, to compute and display very huge and complex scenes in real-time (from 25 to 120 images per second on each pipe).

For further details, see the Equipement page.

Financements

The whole cost of the platform is around 10 MF, among which 5 MF have already been invested, and the 5 MF left are registered to the 12th CPER

The main contributors are INRIA (6 MF), the Rhône-Alpes (2,25 MF) Region, the General Council of Isere (1,25 MF), and the Research Department(0,5 MF).