NOTES: I'm still working on this page as time permits, so some of the links are dead.
SCAPE is a multi-view, collaborative workspace being developed by the 3DVIS Lab that fuses the traditionally separate paradigms of virtual and augmented reality into a combined system. By integrating an augmented workbench, an immersive room display, and a robust set of "Magic Lens"-enabled [Bier et al. 93] devices, SCAPE aims to provide a continuous range of view control over the continuum of scales, perspectives, and visual complexity, allowing users to refine the viewing parameters of a complex dataset to a "just sufficient" level. Further, by incorporating "tangible" interface [Ishii 97] devices, SCAPE aims to provide intuitive manipulation through simple and real-world interaction metaphors using passive haptic props to give a greater sense of presence to the virtual dataset.
In a typical application setting, the SCAPE workbench serves as an exocentric view of the dataset from a low level of detail, in a metaphorical paradigm typically referred to as a "World in Miniature" (WIM) [Stoakley et al. 95], whereas the room display presents the same dataset from an egocentric viewpoint at very high detail. Consider, for instance, exploring the ancient Aztec city of Tenochtitlan. The former viewpoint provides a "bird's eye" overview of the dataset—a 3D map of the city—whereas the latter provides a first-person, immersive view of a particular locale—essentially like taking a life-sized walk through the city streets.
Together, the workbench and room display serve as a useful aid to navigation and orientation, and can provide some overview of events in the environment. Further, as the virtual WIM is always grounded on the physical workbench, the combination serves as an important platform for collaborative interaction with other users in the workspace. In particular, co-located users can virtually explore disjoint areas of city via the room display, and then use the workbench and its anchored WIM as a forum for discussion or information exchange.
However, for extremely large or complex datasets, the two views provided by the workbench and room displays alone are often insufficient, due to the large disparity in their size and detail, and thus some efficient mechanism is needed to refine and bridge the gap between them. A framework of Magic Lens-enabled interface devices provides exactly this. In SCAPE, there are essentially two types of lenses: volumetric lenses, which allow "chunks" of data to be grabbed from the immersive view of the room display, and planar lenses, which allow alternative inspection or manipulation of data on the workbench through a "window" display.
Pictoral Summary of SCAPE Components (From Above):
Hua, Brown, and Gao. "SCAPE: Supporting Stereoscopic Collaboration in Augmented Projective Environments." Computer Graphics and Applications, IEEE Press, 2004. (pdf)
Brown, Hua, and Gao. "A Widget Framework for Augmented Interaction in SCAPE." CHI Letters / UIST, ACM Press, 2003. (pdf)
Hua, Brown, and Gao. "System and Interface Framework for SCAPE as a Collaborative Infrastructure." Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments, MIT Press, 2004. (pdf)
Brown, Hua, and Gao. "Toward a Tangible Interface for Multi-modal Interior Design Using SCAPE." IEEE Virtual Reality Conference Workshop: Beyond Wand and Glove Interaction, IEEE Press, 2004. (pdf)
Brown and Hua. "Enabling a Continuum of 3D Visualization: Magic Lenses for Augmented Virtual Environments." Computer Graphics and Applications, IEEE Press, [accepted Q3, 2005].
Research Sponsors:
National Science Foundation
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
3M Corporation
Contacts:
Dr Hong Hua (PI): hhua AT optics DOT arizona DOT edu
Leonard D. Brown: ldbrown AT cs DOT arizona DOT edu
