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BLUE-C
A NEW GENERATION SPATIALLY
IMMERSIVE DISPLAY

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ABSTRACT:
Virtual Reality (VR) is presently a hot, up to date topic. In the past decade, VR systems
were not so realistic, but as computers become more powerful, more realistic Virtual
Reality worlds are designed. This paper presents an overview of an upcoming, a new
generation virtual reality system, so called “blue-C”, systems. This system enables a
number of participants to interact and collaborate inside an immersive, virtual world,
while perceiving the photo-realistic three-dimensional human inlays of their collaboration
partners in real time. Finally the future works that can be done are presented.

1.BLUE-C

Today, spatially immersive displays (SID’s) have become significantly important in

Virtual Reality field. SID’s enables the users to work in a collaborative way in the virtual
environment. Most popular SID used today is Cave Automated Virtual Environment
(CAVE). Today, some of these (CAVE) systems become very useful applications used in
wide variety of fields like architecture, automotive industry, medicine, and art. Currently,
multi-projector SID’s serves better quality for degree of immersion, resolution, display
quality, field of view, and ergonomics.Blue-C is a new generation SID that provides
collaborative tele-presence environment offering immersion and 3D Video acquisition for
virtual design. In order to make you feel of a total immersion, Blue-C combines
simultaneous acquisition of multiple live Video streams with advanced 3D projection
technology in a CAVE-like environment. Blue-C consists of two portals: main portal and
the public portal.The main portal is like a CAVE but consisting of three rectangular
projection screens, which can be switched from a opaque state (for projection) to a
transparent state (for acquisition) to allow the video cameras to “look through” the walls.
These projection screens are built from glass panels, which contain liquid crystal layers to
provide acquisition.The conceptual components of the Blue-C architecture are presented
in the figure below. To generate a CAVE-like immersive display, three twin LCD
projectors with additional LC shutters are used. To solve the problem of 3D
reconstruction and projection, actively shuttered projection screen which enables the
video cameras to “see through the wall” during frame acquisition are used. The projection

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technology of Blue-C depends on active stereo using two LCD projectors per screen.
These LCD projectors are shuttered synchronously together with the screens, the stereo
shutter glasses, active illumination devices, and the acquisition hardware. To improve the
texture and color quality of the 3D video, additional active LED illumination, which
produces calibrated lighting conditions during the acquisition phase, is used. Video frame
capturing is triggered at a fixed rate in a small time slot between left and right eye
projection. During acquisition, the shutter glasses are switched to opaque for both eyes,
as are the projectors LC shutter.

Figure1: conceptual components of the

Blue-c architecture including hardware and software

The 3D video representation of the user is formed from the multiple video streams. The
design of the Blue-C is so scalable that it enables the connection with the portals that are
less complicated in hardware.

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The problem with CAVE is, while CAVE systems feature a large display area at high
resolution, they do not physically surround the viewer and, thus, are not fully immersive.
Blue-C, by combining the advantages of the total immersion experienced in a CAVE with
simultaneous real-time 3D video capture and processing, is designed for high-end remote
collaboration and presentation. Nevertheless, the cost of Blue-C environment is not more
expensive than a usual CAVE.

1.1 Telepresence and Collaboration in Blue-C

At present, telecollaboration is a key issue for many applications; therefore many

research for telecollaboration in SID’s have been made to support telepresence within
virtual and real environments. These mixed systems main idea was to augment
immersion and realism by integrating the remotely located users into the virtual world.
First approaches were depending on 2D video conferencing, but they were not so
expressive to support natural interaction between the remotely located users.

Currently, some of the systems supporting telepresence are Teleport the Office
of the Future, and more recently the National Tele-Immersion initiative. The main idea of
these systems is typically to convert a real office environment into a virtual world. The
problem with these current systems is that these systems do not provide a full real-time
3D acquisition of the user that would allow the other participants to freely
navigate around the user, but blue-C provides.

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Figure2: participants at the two blue-c portals are able to perceive each other inside a
virtual world

To offer a full 3D real-time acquisition of users for collaboration, blue-C consists of two
portals which are installed via a gigabit link between the Department of Computer
Science located at the ETH Center and the Department of Architecture located at the
ETH Campus on the Hönggerberg.

1.1.1Cave
The first blue-c portal is a CAVE-like system, which is based on a three-sided stereo
projection system. 16 cameras are placed outside of the projection room to provide a full
coverage of the user inside the system. Because the cameras are placed outside of the
projection screens, special liquid crystal projection screens used to allow looking inside
the projection room.

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figure3: CAVE portal of Blue-C

1.1.2 Power wall

The second blue-c portal, which is open to public, consists of single projection screen,
like a power wall. 16 cameras are placed inside the walls for 3D acquisition of the user
and transmitting it to CAVE portal in real time. Stereo projection and six-dimensional
mice provide the feeling of fully immersion.

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1.2User Interaction:
A standard six-degree of freedom mouse with a small joystick (Fake space Wand) is used
for the interaction within the virtual environment. Both buttons and joystick can be used
to move forward, backward, up, down, left and right, and also rotate within the virtual
world. Also, they are used to select, pick and interact with objects within the
environment. Motion and button event generator drivers are offered by the blue-C API,
which also provides hit-sting, object identification, and a visual feedback for the pointing
direction in the form of a colored sphere at the intersection point between the (invisible)
ray from the tracker and the scene geometry. Also, collision detection and navigation
within the virtual environment are the features of the blue-C software.

Also within the blue-C environment, a simple pointing gesture with one or two hands can
be recognizable and this feature provides additional tracking device. The pointing gesture
is the line of sight connecting the eyes of the user and the fingertip of the pointing hand.

1.3Interaction Techniques
Besides navigation inside a virtual world and picking of objects, blue-C provides3D
motion tracking devices such as Ascension and Polhemus magnetic tracking systems.

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Within the blue-C environment, simple fly motion navigation with collision detection,
viewing from arbitrary viewpoints, and basic object picking operations are implemented.

The following interaction techniques are possible within the blue-C environment:

1.3.1Arbitrary Viewpoints
It is possible to look at the participants from different viewpoints unlike 2D conferencing
systems, and showing real objects to the remote user, which is not possible with avatar
systems.
1.3.2 Placement and Instances
Location and orientation of 3D video objects within the virtual scene can be easily
altered.

1.3.3Deformations and Modifications

At present, only the procedural deformations like explosions and sine waves through the
objects are implemented. “Beaming” is another type of deformation process for changing
the location of the object by floating the point samples randomly.

1.3.4Effects
It is possible to freeze the 3D videos, which enables freeze-and-rotate effects like in the
“Matrix”-like movies, and also fast-forward and reverse, slow motions with the help of
recording.
1.3.5Collision Detection and Occlusion Handling

Collision detection enables moving 3D objects only in consistent places within the
environment. Since the 3D video objects are regular three-dimensional geometries in the

virtual world, Occlusion Handling is an easy task and implemented by Z-buffering.

1.3.6Recognition
Another type of tracking is detecting head and hand positions. For instance, in the
Flashlight application, a user can point a virtual flashlight into the virtual scene and after

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the calculation of the soft flashlight cone, only objects in the cone get illuminated and the
other parts are dark.

1.4Applications
Different applications have been implemented to demonstrate the
unique characteristics and advantages of blue-C environment. These
applications vary from information visualization area to shopping.Some
of the applications that are implemented in the blue-C environment are
Infoticles, IN: SHOP, Chess game. Infoticles is an information
visualization technique that allows users to analyze database contents
within immersive virtual reality environments.

IN: SHOP is designed to bring distant physical shops, like haute fashion shops, together
in a virtual space.

Applications developed within the blue-C environment uses the blue-C API, which is
developed in collaboration with the application designers. In its essence, blue-C API uses
the SGI OpenGL Performer programming library. It is designed to support any number of
blue-C portals with diverse hardware and software configurations. Its main aim is to
provide a high level-programming interface to the blue-C system. Its focus is to integrate
different media and data types for blue-C environment, such as live 3D video and audio
streams.

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These applications exhibit the telecollaboration in 3D virtual environment and immersion

features of the blue-C system. For interaction and using a pointing gesture for navigation
in the virtual environment, gesture recognition modules are used.

1.4.1 IN:SHOP
IN: SHOP is the first example with the blue-C technology to demonstrate the
Possibilities within the blue-C system. Currently, shopping centers use the most current
multimedia technology such as projection walls, information terminals to increase their
income by attracting customers. IN: SHOP is the new generation of these technologies,
and it integrates the traditional shopping and marketing structures with 3D computer
graphics, telepresence, spatially immersive displays, and Internet shopping paradigms to
create a flexible and adaptable commercial environment. Its central focus is interaction
and remote collaboration instead of one-way communication.

IN: SHOP brings geographically disparate customers and sales clerks who can interact in
real time with each other through the virtual environment provided by the blue-C system.
Telepresence using 3D video technology enables natural interaction between the
customer and a remote sales assistant. For IN: SHOP application, an haute couture
fashion shop and an auto shop is implemented by using two interconnected virtual reality
theaters.To enable remotely located users to meet, communicate and collaborate in
distributed shopping, IN: SHOP uses two portals. The figure below illustrates the IN:
SHOP concept. In the virtual world, the customer can access to a personalized shopping
environment, which presents a large collection as real as a big warehouse. Also, joining
distant shops using telepresence and networking technology create a unified shopping
space. In this united shopping space, telepresence helps the international traveling
customer in getting more assistance from a familiar sales person. The customer and the
sales person can communicate similar to the natural traditional shopping way. Also, the
sales person helps novice users in getting used to the interaction and navigation within
the environment

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Figure6: Remote collaboration in the blue-c environment with a shared database and
network transmission for telepresence.

1.4.1.1 User Scenario

A customer, attracted by a campaign, enters the IN: SHOP application for shopping.
Then, the system automatically recognizes the customer and loads his profile, which
contains information about his personal data, bought items, and items of interest.
According to the customer’s profile, the sopping environment is configured, for instance
appropriate new items and personalized advertisement are presented to the customer.

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Figure7: Concept image: Multimedia product presentation using 2D images.

When the customer enters the blue-C environment, he is fully immersed in the
Environment and assisted by the sales person in selecting the products. Since sales clerk
is an expert user, he can access to the entire product catalog from the database and then
can present the customer other items according to his demand. The items, in which the
customer is interested, are saved to the database and the following steps are rendered
according to these selections. Also, the customer can navigate through different
presentation styles. Then the sales clerk shows the user selections using traditional and
virtual based media, such as 3D representations of humans and objects, 2D movies,
images, hand drawn graphics, or simple text.

2.CONCLUSION & FUTURE WORKS FOR BLUE-C

The blue-C system is primarily designed for high-end remote collaboration and
presentation. Within blue-c we develop new architecturally biased applications that
employ the technology. We focus on new information technologies, which are used in
combination with common presentation media. We investigate ways to employ these

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approaches in designing new technologically enhanced environments. The most

important problem of blue-C system is it is limited to a single user per portal. For future
research, multiple user support can be an issue. Also, connecting the real product
database is another future issue.

3.REFERENCES
[1] http://blue-c.ethz.ch
[2] M. Gross, S. Würmlin, M. Naef, E. Lamboray, C. Spagno, A. Kunz, E. Koller-
Meier,T. Svoboda, L. Van Gool, S. Lang, K. Strehlke, A. Vande Moere, and O. Staadt:
“blue-c:
A Spatially Immersive Display and 3D Video Portal for Telepresence”. In Proceedings
of ACM SIGGRAPH 2003, pp. 819-827, 2003.
[3] S. Lang, M. Naef, M. Gross, L. Hovestadt: “IN: SHOP: Using telepresence and
immersive VR for a new shopping experience”. In Proceedings of Vision, Modeling,
Visualization 2003, 2003. In Print.
[4]http://www.chiplace.org/chifringe/2004/655.pdf.
[5] http://www.activeworlds.com/
[6] S. Lang, M. Naef, M. Gross, L. Hovestadt: “IN: SHOP: Using telepresence and
immersive VR for a new shopping experience”. In Proceedings of Vision, Modeling,
Visualization 2003,2003. In Print.

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