Ruge’s Summaries for Week2

Hodges et al: Fear of Heights, Schell et al: Theme-park VR, Bajura: Ultrasound,

Hodges Fear of heights

“Virtual Environments for Treating the Fear of Heights” discusses exactly what the name implies. Researchers (Hodges, Kooper, et al.) document and discuss the use of Virtual Reality to aid in the rehabilitation of those suffering from Acrophobia (fear of heights). Starting with selecting students, notably many from Georgia Tech as that was the main researchers current institution. Much of the setup of the experiment was straightforward and uninteresting with a few exceptions.

I was surprised at the percentage of students they originally deemed to be suffering from Acrophobia, 10% seemed like a larger percentage than I would have expected. The necessity for a tactile response is not as surprising but largely interesting. The fact that immersion can occur even with the worst graphics and horrible sound if the the subjects were able to touch the railing, and hit the buttons on the elevator. This effect is similar to that which we discussed in class on the use of helicopters simulations for vietnam veterans. The tactile sense being far more important than almost any other sensory input. Assuming the perfect immersion were possible (perfect graphics, authentic 3d sound, even smell) would the importance of tactile still be that much more? If would the system benefit if it could have all senses but no tactile feedback for some unimaginable reason.

The final result of the experiment is as would be expected, many patients reported improved response towards heights. In my opinion this is best shown with the reports of students out of lab activities rather than the recorded results. They mentioned that many of the students sought to place themselves in more traditionally anxious situations in their everyday life, (such as parking decks, and open elevators. These shows that the subjects were not only getting more accustomed to the simulation but more comfortable with heights in general.

Schell theme park

“Designing Interactive Theme Park Rides” captures the process, problems, and successes of the Pirates of the Caribbean interactive game.

The game itself is constructed as a room surrounded in projected displays. In the center of the room is a simple model of a boat with 6 cannons and a Helm. A group of participants would enter and takes roles as captain and gunners. While the boat moved through the game. In order to allow the participants more of a feeling of immersion than large screens and 3d sound would allow the boat as a whole would shake move and react.

I found the sections of the paper dealing with game mechanics and story function to be more interesting than the discussions of immersion. However the area between the two is relatively grey. The designers faced problems such as helmsmen not venturing where they game intended, or missing the fun parts of the game. THe more Virtual Environment significant solutions actual lay in sacrificing the realism for immersion. Changing the Cannon balls to a less realistic color, making the ship move more dramatically than a boat would, and adjusting the mechanics to better fit the warped view of pirate ships that people have, all made the simulation as a whole less realistic. These changes however allowed the participants to feel more comfortable, at home, and most importantly involved. That feeling of being part of the story could be argued as more important that physical immersion, if not the same thing. I would be curious how the actual designers of the project classified their goals and priorities? Was immersion in the game, or participation in the game more important?

Ultrasound Imagery

The paper “Seeing Ultrasound Imagery within the patient discusses the technologies and techniques necessary to capture and utilize ultrasound and other 2d and 3d imagry techniques to integrate 3d technology with medical uses.

The first piece is aquisition. To use 3d data and insert it into a usable environment data must be captured. This is traditionally done with capture many 2d slices of an object and reconstructing them in a computer system. These systems require much calibration and the algorithms must no precise information such as orientation, location, and the axis and time it was captured. These systems would not be easy to setup and use, and would be even more difficult to adapt to “real-time” capture systems. The paper explains how in many practical medical uses (such as surgery or biopsy) this data must be continually captured and displayed in real time.

Even once the data is captured, it offers few benefits over traditional techniques if the data can not be displayed and/or overlayed in a virtual or augmented reality. displaying 3d objects and images on a 2d display only offers a few enhancements.

The author then discusses the displaying technology that would be used. Assuming that accurate real time data is captured, it discusses how to use use augmented techniques to display the information to the user. Although the system is documented in detail, it is little different than many of the systems we discuss in class (head mounted display, location tracking, to overlay the 3d image fed from a computer onto the environment shown through a camera.

Many other factors seem to prevent the use of many of these technologies than the short paper documents. Such as ease of use, cost of the system, and general faith in the technology. Problems such as lag, or slight variations in the orientation, or location of the image would be very dangerous in a medical field. Assuming all the necessary technologies exist to capture and display the information, what would it take to have the technology fully implemented in everyday medicine?

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