Main Content Jump to Footer
Amir Hajizamani's bursary placement
Amir Hajizamani from Altrincham Grammar School for Boys, Altrincham spent 4 weeks in the School of Computer Science at Manchester University looking at Stereoscopic viewing in vital environments.
The aims of the project
The aim of this project was to work on and develop a system that demonstrated Stereoscopic Viewing in Computer generated Virtual Environments (VE).
How the project was carried out
The task was to adapt an existing model of the lab into a stereo-enabled walk-through model. The two offset images that were produced were fed out of the computer through two different ports, each connected to its own monitor and projector. The projectors needed to be calibrated such that if the same image was displayed on both outputs, the images projected on the screen by the projectors would overlap perfectly. This meant manual adjustments to the screen setups.
Before starting to make a piece of software, 10 days needed to be spent learning the C programming language, and the MAVERIK toolkit, which is a toolkit designed by the AIG group. Finally, the computer software for this application needed to be written. A simple template program was used for this model which only viewed a single image and built on it to produce an application that created two different viewpoints offset by 6.5 cm (average distance between the eyes). This worked fine, except when objects got very close to the ‘eye’ – inducing diplopia (double-vision). This meant that the IPD (inter-pupil distance) had to be changed to compensate this, although this isn’t the mechanism used in our vision.
Over several days the application was experimented on and developed. During the development process, the source code was documented for future reference and to provide extra documentation. The viewing model to be used with a Head Mounted display which can be worn to immerse oneself in the ‘Virtual’ Environment was also adapted.
The most valuable thing about the bursary experience
The four weeks I spent on this project were probably the more useful and productive I have had in my mission to learn as much as I can about computing before university. Not only did I learn more about VE and graphics, but I also gained much-needed experience with non-conventional pieces of software and hardware and met experts in the field and felt that I was able to talk to them about their subject. This is more than I could have done under any other circumstances. The knowledge, confidence and experience that I am left with will, without a doubt, help me in my studies at A-Level and university.
Last Updated Fri, 17 November 2006
