Project information

submitted by
Stephan Beck

Co-Authors
Yorrick Sieler-Morzuch, Philipp Tornow, Christian Hilpert, Joachim Billert

Mentors
Dr. Stephan Beck, M.Sc. Adrian Kreskowski, M.Sc. Tim Weißker

Faculty:
Media

Degree programme:
Computer Science and Media (Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.)),
Computer Science and Media (english) (Master of Science (M.Sc.))

Type of project presentation
Research project

Semester
Summer semester 2019

• Bauhausstraße 11
  (VR Labor)

attractive to children

Links
https://www.uni-weimar.de/de/med…

Project description

Virtual reality is nowadays often associated with users wearing head mounted displays (HMDs). When observing such fully immersed HMD users, one often wonders what they perceive. What do they explore? Which virtual world are they navigating through? To really understand their experience, the best way is to meet them in the same virtual environment.

We are convinced that virtual reality is a social medium that enables people to meet and collaborate in shared virtual worlds. In collocated settings, HMD users are often represented as stylized or computer generated (CG) avatars in order to see each other. However, such representations cannot convey body language or facial expressions well. Instead of representing users as CG avatars, modern telepresence systems use real-time 3D capturing and reconstruction technology and represent the users as realistic 3D video avatars. In fact, meeting a user's 3D video avatar inside a telepresence system almost feels like meeting the person in reality. Consequently, HMD users should be represented using similar technology in collaborative applications.

In this project, we allow collocated HMD users to see themselves and each other inside shared virtual environments as 3D video avatars using lightweight 3D capturing technology. To achieve this, we equipped HMDs with color and depth (RGBD) sensors. Thus, the RGBD-sensors become a user’s additional eyes that can capture and integrate other users standing next them into their vision.