VIRTUAL REALITY

"The illusion of participation in a synthetic environment rather

than external observation of such an environment. VR relies on
3D, stereoscopic, head-tracked displays, hand/body tracking
and binaural sound. VR is an immersive, multi-sensory
experience."

- Michael A. Gigante -

Prelude
Virtual Reality is a discipline based on a technology which allows
immersion of sight and interaction in tri-dimensional virtual
environs (Surrounding Areas) generated by a computer. Virtual
Reality is progressively attracting the attention of the engineering
world because of its capability to potentially replace, in a short while,
the physical mockups and the training scenes with equally stimulating
environs.

Artificial reality, Cyberspace, Virtual Reality, Virtual Worlds, Virtual

Environments, Synthetic Environments are the synonyms.

Virtual Environment
• This is a term coined by Myron Krueger in the mid-1970.
• Krueger intended the term to mean “full-body participation in
computer events that is so compelling that it is accepted as
real experience”.

A Computer-Generated, 3D Spatial Environment in Which Users

Can Participate in Real-time Virtual Environments Can Be
• Fully Immersive, Encompassing Worlds
• Augmentations (Overlay) to the Real World
• “Through the Window” Worlds (Non-immersive)

VR is still an uncertain and under-utilized technology. This is partly due

to the perceived limitations of the systems and the usability issues
associated with them, but also, to the lack of well-documented case-
studies providing evidence of any added value or cost benefits from
use. There are still too many unanswered questions associated with

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the technology and therefore few guidelines that enable industry to
make informed decisions about implementation.

Minutiae
Metaverse and Avatars

Sometimes the 3D virtual world (Gibson matrix) is called the Metaverse

and the 3D icons or appearances of characters (humans) in the
Metaverse are called Avatars.

Telepresence

Real-time telepresence:
• A visual virtual world that you interact with. - Interactions
are reflected in the movement of some real world object.
i.e. a Data Glove being moved to control a robot hand that
moves at the same time.
Delayed telepresence:
• A visual virtual, world that you interact with while
recording the interactions.
• When you are satisfied with the results, play the
interactions across your communications delay.

Immersion & Presence

• Immersion is best thought of as “from what perspective

(viewpoint) am I viewing the virtual world?”
• “Presence” is the notion that the user of the virtual world
feels “present in the virtual world” such that the user can
perform a task or set of tasks.

Sometimes the phrase “immersed in the virtual world” is

taken to mean the same as “present in the virtual world”.

Why an immersive interface?

The environment encompasses large virtual spaces A large

number of parameters are to be manipulated by the operator
Tasks are of a hands-busy nature Perspective is important

Virtual reality systems are targeted to be used in factory

automation in the future because of remote control for a fully
automated factory. In the virtual reality system, tactile presentation
becomes important for enhancing attendance as regards the site.

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Consequently, several tactile presentation systems have been reported
and we can find now and then commercial tactile presentation systems
such as PHANToM. On the other hand, texture recognition is one of
the important items obtained from tactile sensation. Information
obtained from the texture recognition is effective for classification of
products and inspection surface defects. Since human tactile receptors
(mechanoreceptor) are distributed over the entire skin surface, the
tactile presentation devices should present distributed pressure.
Additionally, precise actuators capable of presenting from several
microns to about 100 microns are needed for presenting the surface
texture.

Virtual training in such operations as assembling, maintenance and

support allow the trainee to quickly acquire practice in operating. The
trainee would carry out most of the training in the interactive
simulation where both the activity circling round the operation and the
instruments used are recreated virtually. This approach is particularly
suitable for operations where a false move, carried out in the real
world, would expose the operator (still ill-experienced in risk-taking) to
a precarious situation for both people involved as well as physical
structures.

If Virtual Reality is considered as an interfacing technology, it is

strictly dependant on man-machine interfacing devices (helmets,
gloves, recharging devices, surveys on positioning) to sensitize
computers to human sensations (sight, tact, aural, movement). One’s
ability to perceive such synthesis depends, moreover, on the ability of
one’s computerized system to recreate the virtual scene, both in terms
of accuracy, visible realism and movement of objects forming it. All the
above are important particularly when the user does not simply limit
himself to visibly exploring the environment but interact with it too.

In an ideal Virtual Reality scenario, the user should be able to see

through a stereoscopic display (in order to perceive the tri-
dimensionality of the scene) having all displayed at bearings 180
horizontally, 80 vertically. The user should also be able to feel the
weight of the objects and the resistance they produce as he/she
interacts through natural movements. However, despite the effort to
produce Virtual Reality products, technological requirements have not
as yet been satisfied by the devices being used at present. The most
realistic interfacing for both vision and tactile interaction are
excessively costly and difficult to use. Those which are user-friendly
lack in realism, severely limiting one’s senses during the virtual
experience.

Human Tactile Sensing System

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Determining specifications of the tactile presentation device requires
an investigation of the human tactile sensing system. A cross section
of human glabrous skin is shown in Figure 1. As is shown in Figure 1,
the skin is composed of epidermis; dermis and hypodermis Human
tactile receptors (called mechanoreceptors in neurophysiology) are
located in the dermis and near boundaries between the dermis and the
other layers. Meissner’s corpuscles, Pacinian corpuscles, Merkel cell-
related endings and Ruffini corpuscles are the mechanoreceptors and
distributing over the entire skin. For example, the distance between
two Meissner’s corpuscles is about 600 µm. Mechanoreceptive units
which play a role as the human tactile sensing system consists of the
mechanoreceptors, nerve fibers transmitting signals and nerve cells
processing the signals. So far, the mechanoreceptive units have
been investigated using two kinds of experiments. One is
microneurography, which examines a reaction to a given stimulus
using a tungsten microelectrode inserted into nerve fibers. The other is
psychophsics, which examines a human subject’s replies to questions
regarding the strength of stimulus. As s result of these experiments,
there are Fast adapting type I unit (FA I), Fast adapting type II unit (FA
II), slowly adapting type I (SA I) unit and slowly adapting type II unit
(SA II) in the human tactile sensing system. It was found that
mechanoreceptors of FA I, FA II, SA I and SA II were Meissner’s
corpuscles, Pacinian corpuscles, Merkel cell-related endings and Ruffini
corpuscles, respectively.

Masahiro OHKA,
Shizuoka Institute of Science and Technology,
Toyosawa 2200-2, Fukuroi 437-8555, JAPAN
Tel: +81-538-45-0111, Fax: +81-538-45-0110, [email protected]

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Recognition of fine surface roughness is fulfilled by the aforementioned
FA I. The roughness height caught by SA I is from several µm to
about 100 µm. SA I excites against the roughness height exceeding
several hundred µm. Amplitude below 1 µm is perceived by FA II only
if the stimulus is provided as mechanical vibration. The authors
assume SA II perceives shearing force applied to the skin surface but
this estimation requires further experimental studies to be curried out.

Characteristics of Immersive VR

the unique characteristics of immersive virtual reality can be

summarized as follows:

• Head-referenced viewing provides a natural interface for the

navigation in three-dimensional space and allows for look-
around, walk-around, and fly-through capabilities in virtual
environments.
• Stereoscopic viewing enhances the perception of depth and the
sense of space.
• The virtual world is presented in full scale and relates properly to
the human size.
• Realistic interactions with virtual objects via data glove and
similar devices allow for manipulation, operation, and control of
virtual worlds.
• The convincing illusion of being fully immersed in an artificial
world can be enhanced by auditory, haptic, and other non-visual
technologies.

Head-Mounted Display (HMD)

The head-mounted display (HMD) was the first device providing its
wearer with an immersive experience. Evans and Sutherland
demonstrated a head-mounted stereo display already in 1965. It took
more then 20 years of Research to introduce a commercially available
HMD, the famous "Eye Phone" system (1989).

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 A head-mounted display (HMD):

A typical HMD houses two miniature display screens and an optical

system that channels the images from the screens to the eyes,
thereby, presenting a stereo view of a virtual world. A motion tracker
continuously measures the position and orientation of the user's head
and allows the image generating computer to adjust the scene
representation to the current view. As a result, the viewer can look
around and walk through the surrounding virtual environment.

To overcome the often uncomfortable intrusiveness of a head-mounted

display, alternative concepts (e.g., BOOM and CAVE) for immersive
viewing of virtual environments were developed.

BOOM
The BOOM (Binocular Omni-Orientation Monitor) is a head-coupled
stereoscopic display device. Screens and optical system are housed in
a box that is attached to a multi-link arm. The user looks into the box
through two holes, sees the virtual world, and can guide the box to any
position within the operational volume of the device. Head tracking is
accomplished via sensors in the links of the arm that holds the box.

The BOOM, a head-coupled display device:

CAVE

The CAVE (Cave Automatic Virtual Environment) was developed at the

University of Illinois at Chicago and provides the illusion of immersion
by projecting stereo images on the walls and floor of a room-sized
cube. Several persons wearing lightweight stereo glasses can enter
and walk freely inside the CAVE. Head tracking systems continuously
adjust the stereo projection to the current position of the leading
viewer.

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 CAVE system (schematic principle):

Input Devices and other Sensual Technologies

a variety of input devices like data gloves, joysticks, and hand-held

wands allow the user to navigate through a virtual environment and to
interact with virtual objects. Directional sound, tactile and force
feedback devices, voice recognition and other technologies are being
employed to enrich the immersive experience and to create more
"sensualized" interfaces.

Moving the steering wheel

A data glove allows for interactions with the virtual world:

Non-immersive VR

Today, the term 'Virtual Reality' is also used for applications that are
not fully immersive. The boundaries are becoming blurred, but all
variations of VR will be important in the future. This includes mouse-
controlled navigation through a three-dimensional environment on a
graphics monitor, stereo viewing from the monitor via stereo glasses,
stereo projection systems, and others. Apple's QuickTime VR, for
example, uses photographs for the modeling of three-dimensional
worlds and provides pseudo look-around and walk-trough capabilities
on a graphics monitor.

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Prophecy
Shared Virtual Environments

In the example illustrated below, three networked users at different

locations (anywhere in the world) meet in the same virtual world by
using a BOOM device, a CAVE system, and a Head-Mounted Display,
respectively. All users see the same virtual environment from their
respective points of view. Each user is presented as a virtual human
(avatar) to the other participants. The users can see each other,
communicated with each other, and interact with the virtual world as a
team.

As a first step in this investigation, our goal is to build a support

infrastructure that will allow many users to participate in a shared,
interactive 3D world. Such interaction will include the ability to see
each other, talk to each other, visit locales with each other and work
with each other. The proposed system has elements of a computer-
supported cooperative work (CSCW) environment, a virtual reality
system and an online chat forum. They refer to their work as a
distributed, shared virtual environment, or VE for short.

A naive and basic infrastructure for a shared 3D world is simple; it

consists of a database of objects that exist in the world, a set of tools
to populate that database and a set of devices that display the
contents of the database. The display device doubles as an input
device and allows users to navigate through the world and to interact
with other users and objects in the world. To achieve this, it requires
some form of communication that will allow the display devices to
access the database and to propagate user input to the database.

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Since one of our main goals is to support a shared world, one of the
key differences between our work and existing 3D platforms is that
each user is represented in the 3D world and each user sees a
representation of all other users in the world (commonly referred to an
as Avatar). In a system that scales to many hundreds of users,
supporting each user as a dynamic entity that roams the 3D world is a
significant technical challenge.

The simple architecture shown in Fig.1 would be sufficient to support a

limited number of users operating in a low latency communications
environment. Since we wish to support hundreds of users operating in
a range of networking environments our goal is to understand how to
scale this architecture.

Scaling issues

We face two significant problems when scaling this model. The first is
concerned with distributed consistency and the second with
communication latency.

Figure 2: A simple architecture

Consistency

The fundamental model presented by the Virtual Society (VS) platform

is one of a shared 3D space. Such a space, because it is shared, must
be seen consistently by all users of that space. In a strict interpretation
any actions that occur in the shared space must be propagated to all

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participants in that space. Further we require that conflicts between
user actions are either avoided, or resolved. Lastly, it is required that
actions in the space maintain their causal relationship so that a user
can make sense of a 'happened before' and 'happens after'
relationship. These requirements mirror our experiences in everyday
life and are essential to any system that attempts to provide a degree
of virtual reality.

A simple example serves to illustrate these points. Consider a virtual

shop with two customers (A and B) who are physically at home, one in
Tokyo and one in Hong Kong. When A enters the shop that B is already
in, then B needs to see A and A needs to see B. If A is holding and
examining an article, then it is required that B is not able to take that
article from A (conflict) or that a copy of the article is made available
for B to examine (conflict resolution). Lastly if A then shows B the
article and asks for B's opinion, it is necessary that the request for an
opinion arrives after A has shown B the article. Otherwise B will be
asked for an opinion on an article that (s)he has never seen!

In the ensuing sections we will discuss how this strict interpretation

may be relaxed in some circumstances, and how we can exploit this.

Latency

In the simple architecture depicted in Fig.2, issues of event ordering

and object locking would be resolved internally in the single database.
However, if we wish to scale this system across many sites, then we
are forced to distribute the database across the sites and to ensure
that events that update the database at one site are propagated to all
other sites. The need to distribute the database is primarily driven by
the communication latency in a wide area network like the internet.
Since we are supporting a user based system, we are constrained by
user expectations. It has been shown that a delay in the `action-result'
cycle of more than 250msec will deter users from using the system. As
one of our goals is to support a shared 3D space in the internet
environment and since, in the current internet, delays within Japan
frequently exceed this time, we are forced to distribute state to be
geographically co-resident with users and so reduce access times.

Database partitioning through Aura's

In a system such as DIVE the underlying platform maintains

consistency at the granularity of a 'world' which encompasses many
objects and captures a self-contained visual scenario such as a city or
shop. In many cases, particularly those worlds that represent a large
spatial area, such as a city, it is not necessary for a participant in one

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location to be consistent with another participant 4 (virtual) blocks
away. In that case, maintaining consistency at such a large granularity
forces a high degree of false sharing.

Rather than sharing all elements of a shared world, we reduce the

sharing to a subset of spatially local objects by using an aura to specify
the spatial area of interest around a user. This spatial notion is
obviously a facet of the spatial nature of a shared 3D environment and
has little parallels in a strict data application.

To reduce sharing we partition the shared world according to an aura.

An aura is a notion that has evolved out of work in the area of
computer-supported co-operative work and defines a sphere of interest
associated with a user. In this previous work, auras have been used as
a spatial notion to support interaction models, we have adapted their
use to one whose main purpose is to define the degree of sharing and
where necessary to reduce sharing so as to reduce participants in any
consistency algorithm.

Objects in our system exist in a virtual world. Each world defines a

virtual space captured using a 3D co-ordinate system. Each object
specifies a dynamic aura that represents the portion of the virtual
space in which it is interested. A separate unit, an Aura Manager
(AM) constantly monitors objects as they move around the shared
world and informs objects when other objects collide with their aura.

Figure 3: The abstract architecture

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In figure 3, we can see a simple system with three user objects and
two scenery objects. Object 1 and object two are in each other's auras
and so have a communications link between them.

In essence, we use the notion of aura to partition the database, and

the Aura Manager to track the database partitions.

In our current model, we use auras as a means to control spatial

interaction. However, an aura can be concerned not simply with space
but also with aural or sensory interaction. Thus a user may have a
large visual aura but a small auditory aura. In addition, the aura may
be dynamic. For example, when a user enters a crowded room, then it
is likely that (s)he would wish to reduce his/her visual aura to cut down
on the amount of information (s)he needs to be concerned with.

This is a human model of aura use but directly translatable to our

system. For engineering reasons, as a user enters a crowded locale, we
wish to reduce the the degree of interaction to minimize the amount of
consistency that must be supported. Hence our system will
dynamically reduce the size of a user's aura depending on the number
of participants in the aura group. This approach allows us to ensure
that we never have consistency groups containing may hundreds of
users, even though a particular world will be supporting hundreds of
users.

Once two objects are within each other's aura, we fall back on the
second part of our hybrid approach. Objects in each other's auras will
wish to support a degree of consistency so that they share a view of
the world. Since we are now forced to deal with the issue of
consistency, we need a model that allows us to apply one of a range of
consistency protocols dependent upon the hardware, application and
user constraints. Before we discuss the support for consistency we will
introduce the framework in which we implement the consistency. This
framework is based on a set of replicas which we use as part of our
solution to the latency problem.

Latency hiding

The second major problem we face when building a shared virtual

world is the ability to ensure that interactions work in real time. By this
we mean that our maximum communication time is bounded by a user
perceived notion of interaction delay. The user may initiate an event,
such as selecting an object in a scene, and expects the effect of that
action to be visible within a bounded time.

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We have already started to address this problem with our use of auras,
i.e. since we have reduced the participants that must take part in any
data update we have reduced the time needed to reach consensus on
the consistent state. However, this is not enough, since we have still to
make remote requests to access state. When dealing with data we can
usefully class it into three major categories;

• Static data. This is data which is read only and is never changed.
• Dynamic data whose current value may be 'out of date'. This
type of data changes over time, but it is acceptable for accesses
to this data to return old values.
• Dynamic data that must always be 'up to date'. Accesses to this
type of data must always return the most recently updated
value.

In a shared 3D space there are many data values and many actions in
the shared world that are read only or require only a delayed
consistency. For example, querying the owner of an object does not
require shared consistency, or, changing the color of an object may not
require that the change is immediately visible to all participants.

Languages
VRML

Most exciting is the ongoing development of VRML (Virtual Reality

Modeling Language) on the World Wide Web. In addition to HTML
(HyperText Markup Language), that has become a standard authoring
tool for the creation of home pages, VRML provides three-dimensional
worlds with integrated hyperlinks on the Web. Home pages become
home spaces. The viewing of VRML models via a VRML plug-in for Web
browsers is usually done on a graphics monitor under mouse-control
and, therefore, not fully immersive. However, the syntax and data
structure of VRML provide an excellent tool for the modeling of three-
dimensional worlds that are functional and interactive and that can,
ultimately, be transferred into fully immersive viewing systems. The
current version VRML 2.0 has become an international ISO/IEC

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standard under the name VRML97.

Rendering of Escher's Penrose Staircase

Creating a 3D VR scenario involves a great number of complex

calculations. There are currently two categories of software to produce
these 3D VR scenarios: toolkits and authoring systems.

Toolkits are libraries containing functions mainly for C/C++.

Programmers can use these libraries to code VR applications. These
systems tend to to run faster, depending on the skills of the
programmer of course!

Authoring systems on the other hand are independent applications

allowing the user to create 3D environments. These systems do not
require as much coding as the toolkits do, and as a result will not run
quite as fast as the toolkit systems can muster.

To hold the illusion of reality, virtual reality application are extremely

resource hungry and there are very few machines that have the
resources necessary to create and maintain this illusion. Even if the
machine halts for a split second, the user will lose his/her sense of
illusion. It may take another ten or twenty years some say before
affordable systems will hit the market.

Current stipulation
We have built a demonstration platform running in a Unix/Ethernet
environment to explore these ideas. This work is derived from the DIVE
distributed virtual environment platform. Based on this work we have
begun development of a new platform more suited to an environment
where connectivity spans low bandwidth telephone lines, LANS and the
wide area internet.

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“At this stage we only have a minimal platform running as a research
prototype.” This system consists of a PC based clients which are able
to visualize a scene based on the VRML scene description language.
Clients communicate with local database servers using an in-house
protocol, VSCP (very short area communication protocol), that is
optimized for geometric transformations. We currently have a simple
distributed server that supports a limited number of users and
implements the basic ideas discussed above.

“Our consistency support is based upon the SID (Server Integrated

Database) multicast package from the Swedish Institute of Computer
Science which is also used in the DIVE system.” We support the 3 basic
consistency classes and have a provisional implementation of the
weaker consistency model.

Conclusion and future plans

Building a scalable distributed shared virtual environment is a
technical challenge. Masahiro OHKA has adopted a hybrid approach
whereby to use a spatial notion of Aura to reduce the degree of
sharing, and then provide multiple consistency mechanisms to reduce
communication overhead. They have augmented this with replica
models which provide client side caching for latency hiding. We believe
that these combinations of techniques will allow us to support a
scalable platform.

Their current a future plans are concerned mainly with extending their
initial prototype. Our first goal is to better explore the cost of
consistency in a wide area network and to adapt their class hierarchy
accordingly.

In the future they will concentrate their efforts on exploring the

possibilities of a broadband network and will port the platform to
BROADBAND network which incorporates a video on demand system
and specialized display devices which are part of an associated project
building a BROADBAND based set top box. A novel feature of this work
is their use of the Apertos, distributed object oriented operating
system. This system that is based on a reflective meta-object model
offers a high degree of system adaptability which we hope to use to
further explore the issue of adaptive consistency.

Applications
As the technologies of virtual reality evolve; the applications of VR
become literally unlimited. It is assumed that VR will reshape the

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interface between people and information technology by offering new
ways for the communication of information, the visualization of
processes, and the creative expression of ideas.

Note that a virtual environment can represent any three-dimensional

world that is either real or abstract. This includes real systems like
buildings, landscapes, underwater shipwrecks, spacecrafts,
archaeological excavation sites, human anatomy, sculptures, crime
scene reconstructions, solar systems, and so on. Of special interest is
the visual and sensual representation of abstract systems like
magnetic fields, turbulent flow structures, molecular models,
mathematical systems, auditorium acoustics, stock market behavior,
population densities, information flows, and any other conceivable
system including artistic and creative work of abstract nature. These
virtual worlds can be animated, interactive, shared, and can expose
behavior and functionality

Useful applications of VR include training in a variety of areas (military,

medical, equipment operation, etc.), education, design evaluation
(virtual prototyping), architectural walk-through, human factors and
ergonomic studies, simulation of assembly sequences and
maintenance tasks, assistance for the handicapped, study and
treatment of phobias (e.g., fear of height), entertainment, and much
more.

KEY WORDS

... (VRML) (Virtual Reality Modeling Language)

VRML is a 3d scene description language being standardized for
scene description the World Wide Web.

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…DIVE (Distributed Virtual Environment)
We are currently working with the DIVE group to implement
some of our ideas within the framework of DIVE 3.0

…Gibson Matrix
It is a 3D virtual world or the cyberspace

…PHANToM
Commercial tactile presentation systems

…BOOM (Binocular Omni-Orientation Monitor)

The BOOM (Binocular Omni-Orientation Monitor is a head-
coupled stereoscopic display device. Screens and optical system
are housed in a box that is attached to a multi-link arm.
…CAVE (Cave Automatic Virtual Environment)
Developed at the University of Illinois at Chicago and provides
the illusion of immersion by projecting stereo images on the
walls and floor of a room-sized cube

…CSCW
Computer-supported cooperative work

…VSCP (very short area communication protocol)

An in-house protocol optimized for geometric transformations

References
Sir, I referred to many Papers over the Internet which were referred to the following
areas. So I can conclude that my paper is referred to the following references

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1991 pp 152-164. ACM press.
23 Schneider, B. Replication management using the state machine approach.
Distributed systems. S. Mullender (ed) Addison Wesley publishing. pp.169-198.
ISBN 0-201-62427-3.
24 Hutto, P and Ahamad. M. Slow memory: Weakening consistency to enhance
concurrency in distributed shared memories. Procss. of the 10th ICDCS. pp. 302-
311 May 1990 IEEE press.
25 Lea, R. and Yokote, Y. Adaptive operating system design using reflection. Procs.
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Useful Web Sites

1. The Center for Virtual Environments at The University of Salford

http://www.nicve.salford.ac.uk/
2. Museum of Science and Industry In Manchester
http://www.msim.org.uk/
3. Euravia Engineering and Supply Co. Ltd.
http://www.euravia.co.uk/
4. Fakespace Systems – ImmersaDesk R2
http://www.fakespacesystems.com/
5. Stereographics Corporation – CrystalEyes Shutter Glasses
http://www.stereographics.com/
6. Silicon Graphics Inc.
http://www.sgi.com/

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