VIRTUAL REALITY TECHNOLOGY Grigore Burdea and Philippe Coiffet John Wiley & Sons, 400 pp, 23 color plates, 212 drawings and tables, ISBN 0-471-08632-0 (Cloth) June 17 1994. Call: 1-800-225-5945 or 1-212-850-6418 FAX: 1-212-850-6088 1-800-263-1590 (Canada) T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S 1. INTRODUCTION. What Is Virtual Reality? The Three "I"s Of Virtual Reality. A Short History Of Virtual Reality. Towards Commercialization. The Contents Of This Book. 2. VIRTUAL REALITY TOOLS. 3-D Position Sensors. 3-D Magnetic Sensors. Ultrasound 3-D Sensors. Trackballs. 3-D Probes. Sensing Gloves. The DataGlove; The CyberGlove; The PowerGlove; The Dextrous Hand Master; Stereo Viewing Devices. Human Eye Stereo Viewing; Head Mounted Displays; LCD-based HMDs; CRT-based HMDs; Binocular Omni-Orientation Monitors (Booms); The "Cyberscope"; Stereo Glasses; Stereo Projection Screens; Autostereoscopic 3-D Displays. 3-D Sound Generators; Human Hearing Model; The Convolvotron; The Beachtron And The Acoustetron. Conclusion. 3. TOUCH AND FORCE FEEDBACK. Touch Feedback Is Different From Force Feedback. Virtual Touch/Force-Feedback Requirements. Touch Feedback. Pneumatic Touch Feedback; Vibrotactile Feedback; Enhanced Tactile Feedback; Force Feedback. Force-Feedback Arms; Joysticks; "Enhanced" Joysticks; Portable Masters; The Rutgers Portable Master With Force Feedback; The LRP Hand Master; The "SAFIRE" And The "Force ArmMaster"; Combining Force And Touch Feedback. Conclusion. 4. COMPUTING ARCHITECTURES. Frame Rate Vs. Computational Load. Graphics Performance Vs. Shading Mode. Graphics Performance Vs. Scene Complexity. PC-Based VR Engine. 486-PC With ActionMedia Graphics Accelerators; 486-PC With Spea "Fire" Graphic Accelerators; Other PC-Based Graphic Accelerators. Workstation-Based Architectures. The Virtual Holographic Workstation; The Provision 100 Workstation. Highly Parallel VR Engines. Distributed VR. Supercomputer-Based Systems; IBM Distributed System; Distributed Force Feedback; Two-User Systems. Conclusion. 5. MODELING. Geometric Modeling. Object Shape; Object Appearance; Kinematic Modeling. Object Position. Collision Detection; Flying, Grabbing And Scaling; Object Hierarchies; Viewing The 3-D World; Physical Modeling. Weight Modeling. Surface Deformation And Compliance; Surface Smoothness; Object Behavior. Model Segmentation. Cell Segmentation; Level Of Detail Segmentation; Conclusion. 6. PROGRAMMING IN VR. The VR Editor. RenderWare; The VRT3 Editor. The Amaze Editor. The Resident Modeler. Event Scheduling. Real-time Distributed Simulation. Task Decomposition; Actors; The Hierarchy Element. The Shared Data Space; Graphical Programming. Non-Commercial VR Toolkits. Conclusion. 7. HUMAN FACTORS IN VR. Evaluation Difficulties. VR Evaluation Methodology. Control (Feedback); Vision And Graphics Feedback; Influence Of The Image Refresh Rate; Depth Perception; Color Discrimination; Passive Vision; Active Vision; Enhanced Vision; Audio Feedback; "Passive" Audio Feedback; "Active" Audio Feedback; "Enhanced" Audio Feedback; Force And Tactile (Haptic) Feedback; Evaluation Of Sensing Gloves With Haptic Feedback; Evaluation Of Integrated Systems; "Hand-Hand Coordination"; "Hand-Eye" Coordination With Haptic Feedback; "Hand-Ear" Coordination; "Voice-Ear" And "Voice-Eye" Coordination; "Multimodal" Coordination; Simulation Sickness. VR And The Society. Impact On Our Professional Life; Impact On Our Private Life; Impact On Our Public Life; Conclusion. 8. APPLICATIONS. Medicine and Rehabilitation. Surgery; VR Anatomy Trainer; Surgical Simulators; Telesurgery; Hybrid Systems; Rehabilitation; Hand Diagnostic; Body Rehabilitation; Improving Quality Of Life For The Disabled; Biotechnology; Entertainment, Arts and Education. Entertainment applications; VR Arcades; Home-based VR Entertainment; The Arts; Videoplace; Mandala; Virtual Actors; The Virtual Museum; Virtual Music; Education; Military and Aerospace. Military Applications; The SIMNET tank trainer network; Antisubmarine Warfare; The Virtual Stinger Trainer; Aerospace Applications; The NASA Virtual Reality Training; The European Space Agency; The Virtual Cockpit; Business Applications. Finance; The Maxus Stock Trading Interface; Currency Exchange Visualization; Experiential Advertising; Interior Design; Robotics and Manufacturing. VR Applications in Robotics; Aid in Robot Design; Navigation in Unstructured Environments; Off-line Programming; Teleoperation; Manufacturing; Conclusion. 9. THE FUTURE. Large Volume Tracking. New Displays. New Haptic Displays. Neural Interfaces. "Image Gloves". Voice Control. Portable Computers. Programming and Modeling. Conclusion. BIBLIOGRAPHY. LIST OF COMPANIES AND RESEARCH LABORATORIES. INDEX.