Preparing the HoloLens for user Studies: an Augmented Reality Interface for the Spatial Adjustment of Holographic Objects in 3D Indoor Environments

Abstract

Augmented reality (AR), the extension of the real physical world with holographic objects provides numerous ways to influence how people perceive and interact with geographic space. Such holographic elements may for example improve orientation, navigation, and the mental representations of space generated through interaction with the environment. As AR hardware is still in an early development stage, scientific investigations of the effects of holographic elements on spatial knowledge and perception are fundamental for the development of user-oriented AR applications. However, accurate and replicable positioning of holograms in real world space, a highly relevant precondition for standardized scientific experiments on spatial cognition, is still an issue to be resolved. In this paper, we specify technical causes for this limitation. Subsequently, we describe the development of a Unity-based AR interface capable of adding, selecting, placing and removing holograms. The capability to quickly reposition holograms compensates for the lack of hologram stability and enables the implementation of AR-based geospatial experiments and applications. To facilitate the implementation of other task-oriented AR interfaces, code examples are provided and commented. Keywords Augmented reality • AR cartography • HoloLens • Spatial cognition • Experimental methods Zusammenfassung Augmented reality (AR), die Erweiterung der realen physischen Welt durch Hologramme, bietet viele Möglichkeiten die menschliche Wahrnehmung von, und Interaktion mit, dem geographischen Raum zu beeinflussen. Solche holografischen Elemente könnten beispielsweise zu einer Verbesserung von Orientierung, Navigation, oder durch Interaktion mit der Umgebung erzeugter mentaler räumlicher Modelle führen. Da sich AR Hardware noch in einem frühen Entwicklungsstadium befindet, sind wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen der Effekte von holografischen Elementen auf räumliches Wissen und die räumliche Wahrnehmung für die Entwicklung von nutzerorientierten AR Anwendungen notwendig. Die exakte und replizierbare Positionierung von Hologrammen, welche eine maßgebliche Voraussetzung für standardisierte wissenschaftliche Experimente ist, ist durch den Stand der Technik jedoch noch nicht gegeben. In diesem Artikel werden die technischen Ursachen hierfür erläutert. Im Anschluss beschreiben wir die Entwicklung eines Unity-basierten Interface, welches das Hinzufügen, Auswählen, Platzieren, und Entfernen von Hologrammen durch den Nutzer ermöglicht. Die Möglichkeit Hologramme schnell neu zu positionieren dient der Kompensation mangelnder räumlicher Stabilität von Hologrammen und ermöglicht die

Creating Immersive Virtual Environments Based on Open Geospatial Data and Game Engines

“…In addition to new ways of displaying spatial information that is either created manually or based on geospatial data, game engines introduce numerous possibilities of interactivity, animation and simulation that are not available in 2D, pseudo-3D, or previous 3D representations of space (Ferworn et al 2013;Vetter 2019). Possible types of interactions are, for example, picking up, moving, adding or removing objects, and triggering visual or auditory actions via key presses or avatar movements (Keil et al 2019). Modern game engines also apply physics models that enable realistic simulation of dynamic 3D sounds, lighting, gravity, or object collisions based on object shapes, speed and weight (Edler et al 2019a, b;González et al 2017).…”

Immersive VR Experience of Redeveloped Post-industrial Sites: The Example of “Zeche Holland” in Bochum-Wattenscheid

“…The example of Zeche Holland might have introduced some of the main benefits arising from an immersive experience of virtual environments. To optimize the future visualization of such virtual landscapes, researches should explicitly involve cognitive user behaviour during the fulfilment of spatial tasks (see also Clarke et al 2019;Keil et al 2019;Lokka and Çöltekin 2019;Hruby et al 2019;Edler et al 2018b). These tracked responses will likely help to derive new recommendations for an effective human-centred design of immersive VR landscapes.…”

Silhouettes from Real Objects Enable Realistic Interactions with a Virtual Human in Mobile Augmented Reality

“…We applied data augmentation techniques to our dataset before training our segmentation network. We added 10 4 synthesized images into the dataset by (1) replacing the background using the Describable Textures Dataset [41]; (2) rotating images in the range of 360 degrees, to improve the predictability when the mobile device rotates; (3) randomly changing the ratio of the doll area in the image, to mimic different zoom in/out conditions; (4) randomly flipping images on the horizontal and vertical axis. As thus, our network started training with the dataset that was robust for variation.…”

“…Users wear AR glasses or use handheld devices such as a smartphone or tablet to see the mixed environment and interact with virtual objects in real-time. Since users can see the real environment (see Figure 1a), AR systems often require an accurate registration of virtual objects to provide seamless interactions in various situations [2,3]. Incorrect registration of a virtual object in the real space can cause unrealistic occlusions [4,5] or physically implausible situations [6,7], leading to perceptual quality degradation and breaks in presence [8].…”