Virtual Reality Systems

Retrospective

For a summary of CSE 490V, including interviews with the students, please read "New Virtual Reality Systems course turns students into makers", as published by the Allen School News.

Overview

Modern virtual reality systems draw on the latest advances in optical fabrication, embedded computing, motion tracking, and real-time rendering. In this hands-on course, students will foster similar cross-disciplinary knowledge to build a head-mounted display. This overarching project spans hardware (optics, displays, electronics, and microcontrollers) and software (JavaScript, WebGL, and GLSL). Each assignment builds toward this larger goal. For example, in one assignment, students will learn to use an inertial measurement unit (IMU) to track the orientation of the headset. In another assignment, students will apply real-time computer graphics to correct lens distortions. Lectures will complement these engineering projects, diving into the history of AR/VR and relevant topics in computer graphics, signal processing, and human perception. Guest speakers will participate from leading AR/VR companies, including by hosting field trips.

Acknowledgments

This course is based on Stanford EE 267. We thank Gordon Wetzstein for sharing his materials and supporting the development of CSE 490V. We also thank Brian Curless, David Kessler, John Akers, Steve Seitz, Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman, and Adriana Schulz for their support.

Requirements

This course is designed for senior undergraduates and early MS/PhD students. No prior experience with hardware is required. Students are expected to have completed Linear Algebra (MATH 308) and Systems Programming (CSE 333). Familiarity with JavaScript, Vision (CSE 455), and Graphics (CSE 457) will be helpful, but not necessary. Registration is limited to 40 students.

Teaching Staff

Douglas Lanman

Affiliate Instructor, University of Washington, CSE

Director, Display Systems Research, Facebook Reality Labs

Douglas is the Director of Display Systems Research at Facebook Reality Labs, where he leads investigations into advanced display and imaging technologies for augmented and virtual reality. His prior research has focused on head-mounted displays, glasses-free 3D displays, light-field cameras, and active illumination for 3D reconstruction and interaction. He received a BS in Applied Physics with Honors from Caltech in 2002, and his MS and PhD in Electrical Engineering from Brown University in 2006 and 2010, respectively. He was a Senior Research Scientist at Nvidia from 2012 to 2014, a Postdoctoral Associate at the MIT Media Lab from 2010 to 2012, and an Assistant Research Staff Member at MIT Lincoln Laboratory from 2002 to 2005. His recent work has focused on developing the Half Dome prototype series, showcasing wide-field-of-view and compact varifocal HMDs with AI-driven rendering.

Ethan Gordon

PhD Student, University of Washington, CSE

Ethan is a second-year PhD student in the Personal Robotics Lab at the University of Washington. His current research interests are in robotics and AI with a focus on physics-based deformable object manipulation and the application of assistive feeding. He has previously done work in virtual reality and integrated photonics.

Kirit Narain

Undergraduate, University of Washington, CSE

Kirit is an undergraduate in Computer Science with a special interest in AR/VR. He is President of the Extended Reality Association and has previously completed research into building virtual reality headsets with the UW Reality Lab. His current projects include writing an XR data visualization tool and a control system for an electric racing motorcycle.

VR Headset Development Kit

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Step 1: Use an ultrasonic knife to remove excess plastic from the enclosure.

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Step 2a: Begin assembling the display by connecting the HDMI driver board.

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Step 2b: Affix the LCD panel to the acrylic plate with double-sided tape.

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Step 2c: Fold over the HDMI driver board without damaging the flex circuit.

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Step 2d: Affix the HDMI driver board to the acrylic plate and attach the cables.

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Step 2e: Test the display.

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Step 3a: Place the display into the enclosure and align the center of the screen.

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Step 3b: Tune the distortion correction so that lines appear straight.

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Step 4a: Assemble the IMU components.

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Step 4b: Place the IMU components into the enclosure.

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Step 4c: Tune the IMU filtering.

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Step 5a: Create a custom ARToolKit marker and attach it to the HMD.

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Step 5b: Measure the marker offset, relative to the halfway point between the lenses.

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Step 5c: Tune the positional tracking.

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Step 5d: Put everything together to complete your own HMD.

❮ ❯

Students will be provided a kit to build their own head-mounted display, including an LCD, an HDMI driver board, an inertial measurement unit (IMU), lenses, an enclosure, and all cabling. Kits must be returned at the end of the course. All software will be developed through the homework assignments. Component details are listed below.

Final Projects

Eye Tracking for VR Gaming by Alex Zhang

Virtual Batting Cage by Dylan Hayre

VR Galaxy Tour by Natalia Abrosimova and Wenqing Lan

Foveated Ray Tracing by Frank Qin

Finger Tracking using Magnetometers by Alexander Mastrangelo and Paul Yoo

360° Vision using FOV Minification by Neil Sorens

Ear Hands: Spatial Audio for VR Gaming by Christie Zhao and Thomas Hsu

Stereoscopic Ray Tracing for VR by Michal Piszczek

AR Basketball Training by Eugene Jahn

Inverse Kinematics and Full-Body Tracking for VR by Terrell Strong

Exploring Wide-Field-of-View VR Headsets by Andrew Wei Daoyi Zhu

3D Drawing in VR by Daniel Lyu and Lily Zhao

Bird-like Flight in VR by Rory Soiffer and Everett Cheng

VR Volume Rendering by Nguyen Duc Duong, Xiao Liang, and Jeffery Tian

Crime Scene Investigation by Zhu Li and Weihan Ji

Exploring Two-Handed Interactions by Andrew Rudasics

❮ ❯

Schedule

Assignments

Students will complete six homeworks and a final project. Each homework is accompanied by a lab (a tutorial video). Labs must be completed before starting the homeworks. We encourage formatting written portions of homework solutions using the CSE 490V LaTeX template. Students must submit a one-page final project proposal and a final report. Final reports may take the form of a website or a conference manuscript.

Grading and Collaboration

The grading breakdown is as follows: homeworks (70%) and final project (30%).

Projects are due by midnight on the due date. Late assignments are marked down at a rate of 25% per day. If you fail to turn in an assignment on time it is worth 75% for the first 24 hours after the deadline, 50% for the next 24 hours, 25% for the next 24 hours, and then it is worth nothing after that. Exceptions will only be given with prior instructor approval.

While the headset development kits will be shared, students are expected to individually write their homework solutions. Students may collaborate to discuss concepts for the homeworks, but are expected to be able to explain their solutions for the purposes of grading by the instructor and TAs. Final project groups can be as large as three students, subject to instructor approval.

Textbooks and Resources

Lectures are supplemented by course notes, journal articles, and textbook chapters. The following textbooks will be used for CSE 490V, which are freely available to University of Washington students via the links below.

• Marschner and Shirley. Fundamentals of Computer Graphics. 4th Edition. CRC Press, 2015.
• LaValle. Virtual Reality. Cambridge University Press, 2016.

All software will be developed using JavaScript, WebGL, and GLSL. Students should review the following tutorials and online resources to prepare for the labs, homeworks, and final projects.

• w3schools.com: JavaScript Tutorial
• WebGL using three.js: Slides, Video, Documentation, and Source
• kronos.org: WebGL 1.0 API Quick Reference Card

Office Hours and Contacts

We encourage students to post their questions to Piazza. The teaching staff can also be contacted directly at . The instructor and TAs will hold weekly office hours at the following times.

• Douglas Lanman (Wednesdays, 5:50pm to 6:30pm, CSE 436)
• Ethan Gordon (Fridays, 1:00pm to 3:00pm, CSE2 287; Mondays by appointment)
• Kirit Narain (Tuesdays, 2:30pm to 4:30pm, CSE2 150)