PERCEPTION

COMP 4010 Lecture Two

Mark Billinghurst
August 3rd 2021
mark.billinghurst@unisa.edu.au
REVIEW
 The Incredible Disappearing Computer

1960-70’s 1970-80’s 1980-90’s 1990-2000’s 2010 -

Room Desk Lap Hand Head

Making Interfaces Invisible

(c) Internet of Things

Rekimoto, J. and Nagao, K. 1995. The world through the computer: computer augmented interaction with real world environments.
Internet of Things (IoT)..

(c) Internet of Things

• Embed computing and sensing in real world

• Smart objects, sensors, etc..
Virtual Reality (VR)

• Users immersed in Computer Generated environment

• HMD, gloves, 3D graphics, body tracking
Augmented Reality (AR)

• Virtual Images blended with the real world

• See-through HMD, handheld display, viewpoint tracking, etc..
AR vs VR
Milgram’s Mixed Reality (MR) Continuum
Mixed Reality

Internet of Things Augmented Reality Virtual Reality

Real World Virtual World

"...anywhere between the extrema of the virtuality continuum."
P. Milgram and A. F. Kishino, (1994) A Taxonomy of Mixed Reality Visual Displays
 Extended Reality (XR)
Extended Reality

Mixed Reality

Internet of Things Augmented Reality Virtual Reality

Real World Virtual World

Metaverse Components
• Four Key Components
• Virtual Worlds
• Augmented Reality
• Mirror Worlds
• Lifelogging
 History Timeline

https://immersivelifeblog.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/vr_history.jpg
Ivan Sutherland (1960s)

Ivan Sutherland’s Head-Mounted Display (1968)

1
3
Super Cockpit (1965-80’s)
• US Airforce Research Program
• Wright Patterson Air Force Base
• Tom Furness III
• Multisensory
• Visual, auditory, tactile
• Head, eye, speech, and hand input

• Addressing pilot information overload

• Flight controls and tasks too complicated

• Research only
• big system, not safe for ejecting
VPL Research (1985 – 1999)

• First Commercial VR Company

• Jaron Lanier, Jean-Jacques Grimaud
• Provided complete systems
• Displays, software, gloves, etc
• DataGlove, EyePhone, AudioSphere
First Industrial Use of AR (1990’s)

• 1992: Tom Caudell at Boeing coined the term “AR.”

• Wire harness assembly application begun
• Lead by Tom Caudell, and David Mizell
Desktop VR - 1995
• Expensive - $150,000+
• 2 million polys/sec
• VGA HMD – 30 Hz
• Magnetic tracking
Mobile/Wearable Systems (1995)

• 1995 Navicam (Rekimoto)

• Handheld AR

• 1997 Touring Machine (Feiner)

• Backpack AR, GPS, see-through display

• 1998 Tinmith (Thomas, UniSA)

• Outdoor gaming, CAD
Rise of Commercial VR Companies
• W Industries/Virtuality (1985 - 97)
• Location based entertainment
• Virtuality VR Arcades

• Division (1989 – 1998)

• Turn key VR systems
• Visual programming tools

• Virtual i-O (1993 -1997)

• Inexpensive gamer HMDs

• Sense8 (1990 - 1998)

• WorldToolKit, WorldUp
• VR authoring tools
 Mobile Phone AR (2005)

• Mobile Phones
• camera
• processor
• display

• AR on Mobile Phones
• Simple graphics
• Optimized computer vision
• Collaborative Interaction
2008 - Browser Based AR

• Flash + camera + 3D graphics

• ARToolKit ported to Flash
• High impact
• High marketing value

• Large potential install base

• 1.6 Billion web users

• Ease of development
• Lots of developers, mature tools

• Low cost of entry

• Browser, web camera
2008: Location Aware Phones

Motorola Droid Nokia Navigator

VR Second Wave (2010 - )
• Palmer Luckey
• HMD hacker
• Mixed Reality Lab (MxR) intern

• Oculus Rift (2011 - )

• 2012 - $2.4 million kickstarter
• 2014 - $2B acquisition FaceBook
• $350 USD, 110o FOV
Desktop VR in 2016
• Graphics Desktop
• $1,500 USD
• >4 Billion poly/sec
• $600 HMD
• 1080x1200, 90Hz
• Optical tracking
• Room scale
2016 - Rise of Consumer HMDs

Oculus Rift
HTC/Valve Vive

Sony Morpheus
Social Mobile Camera AR Apps (2015 - )

• SnapChat - Lenses, World Lenses

• Cinco de Mayo lens > 225 million views
• Facebook - Camera Effects
• Google – Word Lens/Translate
Hololens (2016)

• Integrated system – Windows

• Stereo see-through display
• Depth sensing tracking
• Voice and gesture interaction
• Note: Hololens2 coming September 2019
ARKit/ARcore (2017)

• Visual Inertial Odometry (VIO) systems

• Mobile phone pose tracked by
• Camera (Visual), Accelerometer & Gyroscope (Intertial)

• Features
• Plane detection, lighting detection, hardware optimisation

• Links
• https://developer.apple.com/arkit/
• https://developers.google.com/ar/
History Summary
• 1960’s – 80’s: Early Experimentation
• 1980’s – 90’s: Basic Research
• Tracking, displays
• 1995 – 2005: Tools/Applications
• Interaction, usability, theory
• 2005 - : Commercial Applications
• Mobile, Games, Medical, Industry
THE BUSINESS OF AR/VR
Why 2021 won’t be like 1996
• It’s not just VR anymore
• Huge amount of investment
• Inexpensive hardware platforms
• Easy to use content creation tools
• New devices for input and output
• Proven use cases – no more Hype!

• Most important: Focus on User Experience

Example: Pokemon GO

Killer Combo: brand + social + mobile + geo-location + AR

Pokemon GO Effect

• Fastest App to reach $500 million in Revenue

• Only 63 days after launch, > $1 Billion in 6 months
• Over 500 million downloads, > 25 million DAU
• Nintendo stock price up by 50% (gain of $9 Billion USD)
 Augmented Reality in 2021
• Large growing market
• > $7Billion USD in 2020
• Many available devices
• HMD, phones, tablets, HUDs
• Robust developer tools
• Vuforia, ARToolKit, Unity, Wikitude, etc

• Large number of applications

• > 150K developers, > 100K mobile apps
• Strong research/business communities
• ISMAR, AWE conferences, AugmentedReality.org, etc
Large Growing Industry
Conclusion
• AR/VR has a long history
• > 50 years of HMDs, simulators

• Key elements for were in place by early 1990’s

• Displays, tracking, input, graphics
• Strong support from military, government, universities

• First commercial wave failed in late 1990’s

• Too expensive, bad user experience, poor technology, etc

• We are now in second commercial wave

• Better experience, Affordable hardware
• Large commercial investment, Significant installed user base

• Will XR be a commercial success this time?

CONCLUSIONS
Conclusions
• Mixed Reality continuum
• AR/VR complimentary technologies
• Key Enabling Technologies
• Display, Interaction, Tracking
• Many possible applications
• Industry, Education, Medicine, etc.
• Rapidly growing market
• Many areas for commercial application
PERCEPTION
What is Reality?
How do We Perceive Reality?

• We understand the world through

our senses:
• Sight, Hearing, Touch, Taste, Smell
(and others..)

• Two basic processes:

• Sensation – Gathering information
• Perception – Interpreting information
Simple Sensing/Perception Model
Goal of Virtual Reality
“.. to make it feel like you’re actually in a place that
you are not.”

Palmer Luckey
Co-founder, Oculus
Creating the Illusion of Reality
• Fooling human perception by using
technology to generate artificial sensations
• Computer generated sights, sounds, smell, etc
Reality vs. Virtual Reality

• In a VR system there are input and output devices

between human perception and action
Example Birdly - http://www.somniacs.co/

• Create illusion of flying like a bird

• Multisensory VR experience
• Visual, audio, wind, haptic
Birdly Demo

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHE6H62GHoM
PRESENCE
Presence ..
“The subjective experience of being in one place or
environment even when physically situated in another”

Witmer, B. G., & Singer, M. J. (1998). Measuring presence in virtual environments: A presence
questionnaire. Presence: Teleoperators and virtual environments, 7(3), 225-240.
 Immersion vs. Presence
• Immersion: describes the extent to which technology is capable of
delivering a vivid illusion of reality to the senses of a human participant.
• Presence: a state of consciousness, the (psychological) sense of being
in the virtual environment.
• So Immersion, defined in technical terms, is capable of producing a
sensation of Presence
• Goal of VR: Create a high degree of Presence
• Make people believe they are really in Virtual Environment

Slater, M., & Wilbur, S. (1997). A framework for immersive virtual environments (FIVE): Speculations on the role
of presence in virtual environments. Presence: Teleoperators and virtual environments, 6(6), 603-616.
How to Create Strong Presence?
• Use Multiple Dimensions of Presence
• Create rich multi-sensory VR experiences
• Include social actors/agents that interact with the user
• Have environment respond to the user

• What Influences Presence

• Vividness – ability to provide rich experience (Steuer 1992)
• Using Virtual Body – user can see themselves (Slater 1993)
• Internal factors – individual user differences (Sadowski 2002)
• Interactivity – how much users can interact (Steuer 1992)
• Sensory, Realism factors (Witmer 1998)
Five Key Technical Requirements for Presence
• Persistence
• > 90 Hz refresh, < 3 ms persistence, avoid retinal blur

• Optics
• Wide FOV > 90 degrees, comfortable eyebox, good calibration

• Tracking
• 6 DOF, 360 tracking, sub-mm accuracy, no jitter, good tracking volume

• Resolution
• Correct stereo, > 1K x 1K resolution, no visible pixels

• Latency
• < 20 ms latency, fuse optical tracking and IMU, minimize tracking loop

http://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-shares-5-key-ingredients-for-presence-in-virtual-reality/
Example: UNC Pit Room
• Key Features
• Training room and pit room
• Physical walking
• Fast, accurate, room scale tracking
• Haptic feedback – feel edge of pit, walls
• Strong visual and 3D audio cues

• Task
• Carry object across pit
• Walk across or walk around
• Dropping virtual balls at targets in pit

• http://wwwx.cs.unc.edu/Research/eve/walk_exp/
Typical Subject Behaviour

• Note – from another pit experiment

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVAO0DkoD-8
Richie’s Plank

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4M92kfnpg-k
Benefits of High Presence

• Leads to greater engagement, excitement and satisfaction

• Increased reaction to actions in VR

• People more likely to behave like in the real world

• E.g. people scared of heights in real world will be scared in VR

• More natural communication (Social Presence)

• Use same cues as face-to-face conversation

• Note: The relationship between Presence and Performance is

unclear – still an active area of research
Measuring Presence
• Presence is very subjective so there is a lot of debate
among researchers about how to measure it
• Subjective Measures
• Self report questionnaire
• University College London Questionnaire (Slater 1999)
• Witmer and Singer Presence Questionnaire (Witmer 1998)
• ITC Sense Of Presence Inventory (Lessiter 2000)
• Continuous measure
• Person moves slider bar in VE depending on Presence felt
• Objective Measures
• Behavioural
• reflex/flinch measure, startle response
• Physiological measures Presence Slider
• change in heart rate, skin conductance, skin temperature
 Types of Presence
• Spatial Presence
• Feeling that you are in another space

• Object Presence
• Feeling that an object is really in your space

• Social Presence
• Feeling that someone is really with you
Object Presence
• What makes an object appear real?
• Touch/Haptic feedback
• Appearance
• Lighting
• Audio cues
• Occlusion
• Etc..
 Social Presence
• What makes a Person appear real?
• Interactivity
• Visual appearance
• Audio cues
• Touch
• Contextual cues
• Etc..

Oh, C. S., Bailenson, J. N., & Welch, G. F. (2018). A systematic review of social presence:
Definition, antecedents, and implications. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 5, 114.
PERCEPTION
Motivation

VR Hardware Human Senses

• Understand: In order to create a strong sense of Presence

we need to understand the Human Perception system
• Stimulate: We need to be able to use technology to provide
real world sensory inputs, and create the VR illusion
 Senses

• How an organism obtains information for perception:

• Sensation part of Somatic Division of Peripheral Nervous System
• Integration and perception requires the Central Nervous System

• Five major senses (but there are more..):

• Sight (Opthalamoception)
• Hearing (Audioception)
• Taste (Gustaoception)
• Smell (Olfacaoception)
• Touch (Tactioception)
Relative Importance of Each Sense
• Percentage of neurons in
brain devoted to each
sense
• Sight – 30%
• Touch – 8%
• Hearing – 2%
• Smell - < 1%

• Over 60% of brain involved

with vision in some way
Other Lessor Known Senses..
• Proprioception = sense of body position
• what is your body doing right now
• Equilibrium = balance
• Acceleration
• Nociception = sense of pain
• Temperature
• Satiety (the quality or state of being fed or gratified to or beyond capacity)
• Thirst
• Micturition
• Amount of CO2 and Na in blood
Sight
The Human Visual System

• Purpose is to convert visual input to signals in the brain

The Human Eye

• Light passes through cornea and lens onto retina

• Photoreceptors in retina convert light into electrochemical signals
 Photoreceptors – Rods and Cones

• Retina photoreceptors come in two types, Rods and Cones

• Rods – 125 million, periphery of retina, no colour detection, night vision
• Cones – 4-6 million, center of retina, colour vision, day vision
Human Horizontal and Vertical FOV

o o o
• Humans can see ~135 vertical (60 above, 75 below)
o o
• See up to ~ 210 horizontal FOV, ~ 115 stereo overlap
• Colour/stereo in centre, Black & White/mono in periphery
Vergence + Accommodation

• saas
Vergence/Accommodation Demo

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_xLO7yxgOk
 Vergence-Accommodation Conflict

• Looking at real objects, vergence and focal distance match

• In VR, vergence and accommodation can miss-match
• Focusing on HMD screen, but accommodating for virtual object behind screen
Visual Acuity

Visual Acuity Test Targets

• Ability to resolve details

• Several types of visual acuity
• detection, separation, etc

• Normal eyesight can see a 50 cent coin at 80m

• Corresponds to 1 arc min (1/60th of a degree)
• Max acuity = 0.4 arc min
Stereo Perception/Stereopsis

• Eyes separated by IPD

• Inter pupillary distance
• 5 – 7.5cm (avge. 6.5cm)
• Each eye sees diff. image
• Separated by image parallax
• Images fused to create 3D
stereo view
Depth Perception
• The visual system uses a range of different Stereoscopic
and Monocular cues for depth perception
Stereoscopic Monocular
eye convergence angle eye accommodation
disparity between left perspective
and right images atmospheric artifacts (fog)
diplopia relative sizes
image blur
occlusion
motion parallax
shadows
texture

Parallax can be more important for depth perception!

Stereoscopy is important for size and distance evaluation
Common Depth Cues
Depth Perception Distances

• i.e. convergence/accommodation used for depth perception < 10m

 Properties of the Human Visual System
• visual acuity: 20/20 is ~1 arc min
• field of view: ~200° monocular, ~120° binocular, ~135° vertical
• resolution of eye: ~576 megapixels
• temporal resolution: ~60 Hz (depends on contrast, luminance)
• dynamic range: instantaneous 6.5 f-stops, adapt to 46.5 f-stops
• colour: everything in CIE xy diagram
• depth cues in 3D displays: vergence, focus, (dis)comfort
• accommodation range: ~8cm to ∞, degrades with age
 Creating the Perfect Illusion
Cuervo, E., Chintalapudi, K., & Kotaru, M. (2018,
February). Creating the perfect illusion: What will it
take to create life-like virtual reality headsets?.
In Proceedings of the 19th International Workshop on
Mobile Computing Systems & Applications (pp. 7-12).

• Technology to create life-like VR HMDs

• Compared to current HMDs
• 6 − 10× higher pixel density
• 20 − 30× higher frame rate
Comparison between Eyes and HMD
Hearing
Anatomy of the Ear
Auditory Thresholds

• Humans hear frequencies from 20 – 22,000 Hz

• Most everyday sounds from 80 – 90 dB
Sound Localization
• Humans have two ears
• localize sound in space
• Sound can be localized
using 3 coordinates
• Azimuth, elevation,
distance
Sound Localization

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIU1bNSlbxk
Sound Localization (Azimuth Cues)

Interaural Time Difference

HRTF (Elevation Cue)
• Pinna and head shape affect frequency intensities
• Sound intensities measured with microphones in ear and
compared to intensities at sound source
• Difference is HRTF, gives clue as to sound source location
Accuracy of Sound Localization
• People can locate sound
• Most accurately in front of them
• 2-3° error in front of head
• Least accurately to sides and behind head
• Up to 20° error to side of head
• Largest errors occur above/below elevations and behind head

• Front/back confusion is an issue

• Up to 10% of sounds presented in the front are perceived
coming from behind and vice versa (more in headphones)

BUTEAN, A., Bălan, O., NEGOI, I., Moldoveanu, F., & Moldoveanu, A. (2015). COMPARATIVE RESEARCH
ON SOUND LOCALIZATION ACCURACY IN THE FREE-FIELD AND VIRTUAL AUDITORY DISPLAYS.
InConference proceedings of» eLearning and Software for Education «(eLSE)(No. 01, pp. 540-548).
Universitatea Nationala de Aparare Carol I.
Touch
Haptic Sensation
• Somatosensory System
• complex system of nerve cells that responds to changes to
the surface or internal state of the body
• Skin is the largest organ
• 1.3-1.7 square m in adults
• Tactile: Surface properties
• Receptors not evenly spread
• Most densely populated area is the tongue
• Kinesthetic: Muscles, Tendons, etc.
• Also known as proprioception
Cutaneous System
• Skin – heaviest organ in the body
• Epidermis outer layer, dead skin cells
• Dermis inner layer, with four kinds of mechanoreceptors
Mechanoreceptors
• Cells that respond to pressure, stretching, and vibration
• Slow Acting (SA), Rapidly Acting (RA)
• Type I at surface – light discriminate touch
• Type II deep in dermis – heavy and continuous touch

Receptor Type Rate of Stimulus Receptive Field Detection Function

Acting Frequency

Merkel Discs SA-I 0 – 10 Hz Small, well defined Edges, intensity

Ruffini SA-II 0 – 10 Hz Large, indistinct Static force,

corpuscles skin stretch

Meissner RA-I 20 – 50 Hz Small, well defined Velocity, edges

corpuscles

Pacinian RA-II 100 – 300 Hz Large, indistinct Acceleration,

corpuscles vibration
Spatial Resolution Body Threshold
Site Distance

• Sensitivity varies greatly Finger 2-3mm

• Two-point discrimination Cheek 6mm
Nose 7mm
Palm 10mm
Forehead 15mm
Foot 20mm
Belly 30mm
Forearm 35mm
Upper Arm 39mm
Back 39mm
Shoulder 41mm
Thigh 42mm
Calf 45mm

http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/chsense.html
Proprioception/Kinaesthesia
• Proprioception (joint position sense)
• Awareness of movement and positions of body parts
• Due to nerve endings and Pacinian and Ruffini corpuscles at joints
• Enables us to touch nose with eyes closed
• Joints closer to body more accurately sensed
• Users know hand position accurate to 8cm without looking at them

• Kinaesthesia (joint movement sense)

• Sensing muscle contraction or stretching
• Cutaneous mechanoreceptors measuring skin stretching
• Helps with force sensation
www.empathiccomputing.org

mark.billinghurst@auckland.ac.nz

@marknb00