GVR 2016 - International Workshop on NEXT GENERATION VIRTUAL REALITY: PERCEPTION MEETS ENGINEERING

Virtual reality (VR) is a powerful technology that promises to change our lives unlike any other. By artificially stimulating our senses, our bodies become tricked into accepting another version of reality. VR is like a waking dream that could take place in a magical cartoon-like world, or could transport us to another part of the Earth or universe. It is the next step along a path that includes many familiar media, from paintings to movies to video games. We can even socialize with people inside of new worlds, either of which could be real or artificial. One of the greatest challenges is that we as developers become part of the system we are developing, making extremely challenging to objectively evaluate VR systems. Human perception and engineering become intertwined in a complicated and fascinating way.
This class will be a week-long, condensed version of a new course offered at UIUC in recent semesters. It covers the fundamentals of virtual reality systems, including geometric modeling, transformations, graphical rendering, optics, the human vision, auditory, and vestibular systems, tracking systems, interface design, human factors, developer recommendations, and technological issues.
Students are expected to complete an implementation project that demonstrates an understanding of the fundamentals as well as following best practices recommendations. The learning outcomes are that students will know how to build a good VR experience, understand how VR works, know how to critically evaluate VR systems, and understand the fundamentals that are useful in shaping the future of VR. Students are expected to have basic engineering or computer science background, but are not expected to be at advanced levels of software engineering or mathematics. Prior experience with programming and matrix multiplication is minimally sufficient.