Multi-Projector Techniques for Real-Time Visualizations in Everyday Environments

Immersive and semi-immersive projection displays, such as CAVEs, walls, workbenches, cylinders, and domes are being used to support virtual reality applications in many professional domains. The visualization of data with these displays, however, requires dedicated rooms for setting up non-mobile screens, and allows the interaction with purely synthetic information only. Current research activities investigate conceptual and technical possibilities for realizing such visualizations in real world environments. They strive for enabling immersive and semi-immersive virtual reality, as well as augmented reality experiences without the need for special display surfaces or permanent screen configurations. Enabling visualizations without projection-optimized screens but on complex everyday surfaces, however, leads to several difficulties: The projected images are geometrically warped, color-blended, and regionally defocused. Furthermore, the application of multiple projectors requires geometric registrations, as well as luminance and chrominance matching and intensity fading to display a single consistent image. Thus, projected images have to be corrected in real-time and on a pixel-precise basis. In addition, other surface properties, such as depth information and global illumination effects can be extracted and human perception factors can be taken into account for improving the final image quality as well as enabling new possibilities. Monoscopic and stereoscopic graphics make semi-immersive, immersive and augmented visualizations in everyday environments possible—without the need for special projection screens.