Author Archives: klmitchell2

About klmitchell2

Kevin Mitchell is an undergraduate at UW-Madison studying Computer Science. He is currently working on a project integrating a Leap Motion controller with a ZSpace screen. He expects this to increase the users ability to manipulate an object in 3d space. During his free time Kevin enjoys exploring everything that has to do with web development. He is hoping to find a career that will both fit his love for technology and design.

IPD Fix. Starting stylus integration.

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The issue that I was having last week with two images appearing was fixed today. The solution to this problem was to make the inter-Pupillary Distance (IPD) smaller. The IPD is the distance between the two pupils of the viewers eyes. By making this value smaller, it made the two images that are rendered in the world builder application appear closer together. Below is an image demonstrating this.

At first I thought this could be a problem with the Nvidia Quadro drivers, and luckily it wasn’t. The next step is to get the Stylus operating within the world builder application. The plan is to spoof the current code for the joystick and use it with the stylus. After this is complete I believe it would be beneficial to get the world builder application to run with out the skeletal viewer. Doing this would decrease start up time and will improve the speed of the world builder when using the leap motion.

 

UPDATE:
Stylus is now being detect in the world builder application. Next step is to add some type of beem or cursor to the stylus. After this is accomplished I can map the key bindings so that you can select and rotate an object in the world builder app.

3D Space Exploration

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This week I read through the documentation and got acquainted with both the Leap Motion  and the ZSpace SDK’s.

An obstacle in this project is that the leap motion is very particular in the way you place your hand over the device. It almost always needs to be perfect in order for the leap motion to detect the hands correctly. (I will post screen shots tomorrow). Also, when you use the ZSpace with the world builder application, you will see two images on the screen while the glass are on, if you close one eye, or take off the glasses, you will only see 1 image.

Ross was able to help me get the leap motion to recognize and display hands is the world builder application. This is a great stepping stone to my the final piece of my project. I first want to get the stylus from the ZSpace to work in the world builder application, there is great documentation in the ZSpace SDK for this.

Goals this week:

1) Get stereo image working, currently showing two images unless glasses are off/glasses are on with one eye closed. **fixed** A simple restart of the computer fixed this issue, surprisingly enough. Next I will try to add an object to the world builder application and see if the 3d effect is working.

2) The world builder application runs smoothly when the skeletal viewer is not selected. But in order for world builder to recognize the leap motion, the skeletal viewer needs to be selected and this causes the application to run very slowly. For this goal, I would like to flag the skeletal viewer to show leap motion data with out the skeletal viewer showing. This will greatly improve the performance of the application.

3) Get the Stylus to work in the world builder application.

So as of right now I am seeing both the right and left images. They are not converging in the world builder application. This obviously doesnt give the immersive effect of being able to rotate the head and see around the object. So in order to move forward, this will need to be fixed.

The figure above demonstrates how objects are seen on the ZSpace screen.

This is what an object looks like with the glasses on. This picture was taken with the glasses off but the two objects are similar when the glasses are on/off.

Exploring leap motion integration with Zspace

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For my independent study project, I am interested in adding an additional input to the ZSpace, called Leap Motion. The ZSpace is a holographic display  and allows the user to manipulate the object (via a stylus) in the virtual environment as if the object were right in front of them. By integrating the Leap Motion device, I hope to bring a more natural way to manipulate the object by using both hands.

Specific hand gestures are still being though of, but I envision that the Leap Motion could also draw objects it self via the index finger.

 

Leap Motion

ZSpace