The main part of the VR Lab is a rear projected (the projectors are behind the screen, so you can walk right up to the screen and not have any shadow problems) stereoscopic display, which from memory was about 12 feet wide and 8 feet high. When we first walked in and put the special polarized glasses on we were greeted by the sight of ourselves in 3D - thanks to a pair of digital video cameras on a tripod, with their images outputted live onto the screen. It looked very strange. The VR Lab at Reutlingen has very much been set up and used by students - which is how we are hoping to operate similar facilities here at SHU - and I was interested to hear that the special twin-camera tripod mounting had been made as a student project. I was also impressed to see that the students could operate the computer display from a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) over the wireless network.
The students went on to demonstrate some stereoscopic content, which was a mixture of filmed, 3d-modelled, and composited (3d modelling work combined with filmed content), which was impressive stuff. The final part of the demonstration was that computer games that use the OpenGL technology (which I know nothing about) can be outputted stereoscopically, which led to me playing a stage of Colin McRae Rally in 3D. My time was awful, but I haven't played it for a while!! But this feeds into the simulation/games for learning area. Second Life in stereo anyone? It is possible
Next, I sat in on a session where students were presenting some work they'd done on audio and sound effects. With my appalling knowledge of German, I didn't understand a word! but it was interesting.
The building we were in for most of the visit had some really interesting spaces, including this area that we saw used for fashion showcases, tutorials, and students with laptops working wirelessly:
There was also a courtyard area that was used for meetings, tutorials, fashion shows etc, shown below:
Later on, I spent some time talking with Jeff about stuff in general - I'd never met him before the trip but had heard about him because of his work on the This Little Life film.
We had lunch in an outdoor picnic area with many students around, and then in the afternoon, Gabriela had arranged a visit to a visualization company in Stuttgart called IC:IDO. It was intersting and useful, especially a demo of some very powerful (and expensive) looking software on another rear-projected screen - see image below.
After returning to the hotel for a while, there was a meal in the evening at a restaurant in Reutlingen. I had already been warned by Bob and Penny about the local speciality of noodles in cheese (I forget the local name for it), but was railroaded into it by one of the staff from the university...
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