25-29 July 2010, Los Angeles

We are pleased to announce that the technological breakthroughts proposed in VirtualGeo 3 beta will be presented at the SIGGRAPH 2010 conference by our partner Immersion.

The VirtualGeo 3 viewer will be demonstrated on a multiuser, multitouch, stereoscopic table at the Emergining Technologies sessions. This demonstration merges massive and high resolution 3D urban environment rendering with 3D display techniques such as viewpoint tracking and stereoscopic rendering. While efficient hardware systems and software algorithms have been well-identified for each technology, combining them raises totally new issues. For instance, each stereo viewing angle is unique, stereo rendering is usually single-viewpoint only, and the focal plane and stereo parameters must be precisely controlled to avoid collision between fingers and virtual objects. In 3D Multitouch's application to city planning, two users share interactions in the 3D city, but each has a unique view of the content, just like they would on a real mockup. Additionally, the system controls stereo parallax by detecting the users' hands and fingers, which allows the most immersive negative parallax when no arm occludes the content. The system switches to positive parallax when users are closer. This unique two-user, stereoscopic multitouch system focuses on the issues and constraints that will most certainly motivate such research work in the future. The goal of the demonstration is to let attendees experience the system and the new problems it introduces, and discuss its preliminary solutions.

The VitualGeo 3 technology will also be presented at the Touchy-Feely talk, Thursday, 29 July | 3:45 PM - 5:15 PM | Theater 411, Session Chair: Dylan Moore, Apple Computer, Inc.