Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Practical evaluations of real user company needs for visualization technologies

2005; Elsevier BV; Volume: 64; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.ijhcs.2005.08.009

1095-9300

Harshada Patel, Sarah Sharples, Séverine Letourneur, Emma Johansson, Hilko Hoffmann, J. Lorisson, Dennis Saluäär, Oliver Stefani,

Virtual Reality Applications and Impacts

The use of visualization technologies by the automotive industry is primarily aimed at increasing competitive advantage. Within the VIEW of the Future project (IST-2000-26089), two automotive companies, PSA Peugeot Citroën and Volvo Technology Corporation, had a need for targeted evaluation of practical issues in their potential use of VR/VE technology. PSA Peugeot Citroën would like to use visualization technology to accelerate and increase the efficiency of their product design cycle. A series of short experiments were conducted to enable PSA Peugeot Citroën to define the technological specifications of a CAVE-type system they would be purchasing to achieve their design goals. The results documented the fidelity of the visualization environment and user experience of the different configuration set-ups. For example, although passive stereo offered more brightness and better representation of colours, PSA Peugeot Citroën employees preferred active stereo due to the distracting ghosting effect present when using passive stereo. Thus PSA Peugeot Citroën chose to implement active stereo in their new system. There is a need for the engineers at the Volvo product companies to present more realistic vehicle components, e.g. car interior parts, in early product development phases. It is not known if the present computer graphics technology can represent vehicle components with high realism in practical applications. In the study reported here, we investigated the perception of visual appearance of virtual surface materials as well as real material samples by Volvo engineers. There was a general loss of information in the VE material representations, e.g. in terms of depth and colour information resulting in dull images. Further research needs to be conducted to examine different methods of producing virtual materials and compare the differently generated virtual materials, in addition to assessing their realism using different types of display technology. This would enable us to find the best method of virtual material production in conjunction with a system which best displays these virtual representations.