Keynote Address – Teaching Virtual Reality:Why and How?

Grigore C. Burdea Ph.D.Professor of Computer Engineering,

Rutgers University.

Symposium on Real World Information Systems,University of Tokyo, Japan

September 8, 2003Updated March 2004

Acknowledgement-

Travel support for this presentation was provided by the 21st COE at the University of Tokyo.

Presentation outline

Introduction; Why should VR be taught in universities? Worldwide survey of universities teaching VR How do we teach VR? How should VR be taught? Conclusions

After decades of research, VR remains misunderstood by the public –

Introduction

Hype and unreasonable expectations; The blame – media, VR equipment and software manufacturers, but also the VR professionals… There is also a lack of unity, no dedicated newsletter, an a sense of fatigue…

Introduction – example of hype

Introduction – Mathematical definition

Why should VR be taught?

So that we help application development efforts in other industries;

So that we educate the general public as to what can and cannot be done;

Successes in industry lead to a need for VR professionals

Examples – military simulations, medical rehabilitation, or oil industry In all these areas VR brings significant cost savings, as well as saves lives.

Military simulations – UK naval gunnery trainer

Oil industry – better discovery rates (80%)

Oil industry – better crude recovery

Ankle Rehabilitation Exercise

VR ankle rehabilitation exercise to be tested August 2002

Stroke patient exercising on the Rutgers Ankle system (August 2000)

Experimental results – stroke patient

Why should VR be taught?

So that more standards of quality of VR education are established;

So that we have more instructors qualified to teach.

Worldwide survey of VR teaching

My web survey found 148 universities teaching VR courses;

Currently only 3% of universities have VR courses;

Distribution is not uniform…

Worldwide survey: North America 64 universities

5 universities

57 universities

2 universities

Worldwide survey: Europe 52 universities

22 universities

3 universities

5 universities

1 university 1 university

1 university

4 universities1 university

7 universities

1 university

1 university

2 u

niv

ersi

ties

3 universities

Worldwide survey: Asia 20 universities

4 universities

5 universities3 universities

1 university

2 universities

4 universities

1 university

Worldwide survey: South America 8 universities

2 universities

3 universities

3 universities

Worldwide survey: Africa – 3 universities

2 universities

1 university

Worldwide survey: Oceania – 1 university

1 university

2004 Worldwide survey summaryContinent Universities General VR Specialty VR

North America (64)

5- Canada, 2- Mexico,

57- US

64 40

Asia (20) 3-Hong Kong, 5-Korea, 1-India,

4-Japan, 2-Malaysia, 1- Singapore, 4-Taiwan

36 5 

Europe (52) 1-Austria, 1-Czech Republic,

1-Denmark, 3-Finland, 5-France

7-Germany, 3-Holland

1-Norway, 1-Spain, 4-Sweden, 1-Switzerland, 22-UK

44 23

Africa (3) 1- Mauritius, 2-South Africa 2 1

South America

(8)

3-Brazil, 3-Colombia, 2-Peru 6 3

Oceania (1) 1- Australia - 1

Total 148 universities 136 77 © G

reg

Bur

dea,

200

3, 2

004

Worldwide survey of VR teaching An updated survey table is maintained at www.vrtechnology.org (click on “Instructor’s resource page”

How do we currently teach VR?

Mostly teach without dedicated VR Teaching Laboratories;

Graduate courses use VR research labs;

This limits the student hands-on experience, and thus true understanding of the field.

How do we currently teach VR?

How do we currently teach VR?

VR is also being taught using distance learning. This is done for specialists in other fields (such as architectural design) who need VR knowledge; Unfortunately, at this time, distance learning does not offer the same feedback modalities and quality of simulations as attending in person a Laboratory session.

How do we currently teach VR?

Previous VR textbooks do not have laboratory manuals, so the instructor has to develop the material on his own;

VR is an intensive subject to teach. Many people give up..

An example of such a textbook is

How should we teach VR?

We need textbooks with videos to illustrate concepts, as well as laboratory manuals with programming assignments; The programming assignments need to be in a free toolkit (such as VRML or Java 3D) rather than in WorldToolKit or other software that requires licensing. Universities cannot afford the cost of such commercial toolkits.

Is Java 3D is as good as WTK?

The simulation variables used to judged performance were: graphic mode (monoscopic, stereoscopic), rendering mode (wireframe, Gouraud, textured); scene complexity (number of polygons 5,000 – 50,000); lighting (number of light sources 1, 5, 10); interactivity (no interaction, hand input, force feedback)

Is Java 3D is as good as WTK?

Java 3D is faster WTK – Release 9WTK – Release 950k poly, Gouraud shaded, stereo50k poly, Gouraud shaded, stereo

Java3D – Release 1.2Java3D – Release 1.250k poly, Gouraud shaded, stereo50k poly, Gouraud shaded, stereo

Java3d is faster on average than WTK, but has higher variability(Boian and Burdea, 2001)

Java 3D has smaller latency Gouraud , stereo, collision detectionGouraud , stereo, collision detection

Java3d has smaller latency than WTK over all scene complexities and light sources (Boian and Burdea, 2001)

An example of such a textbook is

VR textbooks need Instructor’s Resource Web Sites

Instructors teaching a VR class should have access to lecture notes, previous laboratory projects, etc., which reduces their investment of time in teaching the class; Such sites allow authors to update material as the VR state of the art changes.

An example of such Instructor’s Site

How should we teach VR? We need dedicated VR Teaching Laboratories (not Research Laboratories), which allows many students to take such classes; The laboratory needs to multiplex expensive equipment (to allow more workstations in the lab); It needs to have many sessions in a week (dividing the total class size to the available workstations).

A laboratory example (Rutgers U.)

A laboratory example (Rutgers U.)

Product Port of budgetPC 1.7 GHz

(Fire GL2)

NA 48%

Polhemus

Fastrack

Com 1 37%

5DT glove Com 2 10 %

Stereo

Glasses

FireGL2 3%

FF joystick USB 2%

Java/Jave3D NA 0%

VRML NA 0%

Conclusions

We need to teach VR in more universities; We need better communication among teachers; We need better ways of teaching; We need to establish dedicated VR teaching labs; We need standards of quality for diplomas. You can play an important role in this