Virtual Director
- Detailed Technology Description
- The Virtual Director (TM) is a virtual reality interface that enables gestural motion capture and voice control of navigation, editing, and recording in the CAVE, ImmersaDeskTM, and Infinity WallTM.
- Countries
- United States
- Application No.
- 6154723
- *Abstract
-
Description/Details
The Virtual Director (TM) is a virtual reality interface that enables gesturalmotion capture and voice control of navigation, editing, and recording in the CAVE,ImmersaDeskTM, and Infinity WallTM. Essentially, it is a collaborative choreography tool for scientific visualization, which allows users to interactively navigate through a datasetand record and edit camera paths. These camera paths can then be fed to a high-quality,offline renderer for production.
Originally created by Donna Cox, Bob Patterson and Marcus Thiebaux, the Virtual Directorsoftward has been further developed and is now managed by the University of Illinois’Advanced Visualization Lab at Urbana-Champaign.
Virtual Director has been used to help create several high-profile IMAX movies, digitalplanetarium shows, and television shows, including the Oscar-nominated IMAX filmCosmic Voyage (1996), Hayden Planetarium’s The Search for Life: Are We Alone? (2002),and the PBS NOVA episode Black Holes: The Other Side of Infinity (2006).
Virtual Director allows an operator to virtually interact with a 3-dimensional datastructure. More specifically, it provides a 3-D virtual reality system, where the operatorcontrols the input interface through voice commands and gestures. Virtual Directoraccepts voice and spatial movement input and allows the operator, who is immersed inthe graphically represented data structure, to control a virtual camera that will alter theperspective from which objects in the environment are viewed.
Features
- Supports 6 degree of freedom input devices such as a 3dconnexion Spaceball or anIntersense wand.
- Able to render in stereo.
- Allows remote collaboration: collaborators show as avatars in the scene and can share and follow one another’s camera paths
- Runs on Linux and MacOS X machines.
- Modular design allows for easy addition of new input devices or new visualization renderers.
- The virtual director permits an operator to utilize voice commands and three dimensional
- Spatially tracked gesture inputs while immersed in a three dimensional data structure toperform data structure operations and/or playing back of motion path.
Market Trends
The Virtual reality market has been gaining renewed traction with
the recent developments in science and technology. The ability toproduce data at faster speeds allows for the creation of more realisticenvironments. This virtual reality is created by the ability to processdata from multiple inputs and the ability to create higher quality images.According to a new market research report published byMarketsandMarkets, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality Market isexpected to grow at a CAGR of 15.18% from 2013 to 2018 and reach1.06 Billion in 2018.
For more information about this technology, please contact the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Office of Technology Management at otm@illinois.edu.
- *IP Issue Date
- None
- *IP Type
- Utility
- Country/Region
- USA
