marianhlavac/openhvr

FIT CTU Master's Thesis "Surrounding Environment Effects in Virtual Reality"

Master’s Thesis: Surrounding Environment Effects in Virtual Reality

This repository contains master’s thesis text source files and assets.
Source files of the implementation can be found in repositories openhvr-server and openhvr-unity.

Title

Surrounding Environment Effects in Virtual Reality

School

Faculty of Information Technology
Czech Technical University in Prague

Department

Department of Software Engineering

Student

Bc. Marián Hlaváč

Supervisor

Ing. Jiří Chludil

Study Programme & Branch

Informatics, Web and Software Engineering

Abstract

The thesis describes the process of creating a system used for enhancing virtual reality with haptic feedback and other external effects. The primary objective is to create an open and easily extendable software for controlling multiple IoT devices, which works together to provide virtual reality users with effects synchronized with the virtual world. The results also include software tools for developers, which allows them to create more immersive and believable virtual reality experiences.

Assignment

The goal is to create a part of a virtual reality system, which enhances the experience in the virtual reality worlds with real-world effects, such as wind or heat effects. The work is split into three parts — web-based room configurator, server application, and Unity framework plug-in.

1. Research relevant electrical appliances and their capabilities, determine which of those are suitable for producing the effects and controlling programmatically from a computer.

2. Research and evaluate existing software solutions for the room configuration.

3. Using the typical software engineering methods, design the room configurator and methods of communication between devices and the server.

4. Implement the web-based room configurator, server application, and Unity framework plug-in.

5. Write unit tests, perform integration tests and user testing of the completed system.

Table of Contents

• Introduction

• Virtual reality

  • Contemporary hardware

  • Uses of virtual reality

  • Developing for virtual reality

• The current state of sensory feedback in virtual reality

  • Experiments in sensory feedback

  • Commercial products providing haptic feedback

• Existing solutions and Related work

  • Related work

  • Configurator tools

• Analytical evaluation of the system

  • Assessment of human senses

  • Viable electrical appliances

  • Analysis of the appliances used

  • Configurator Tool analysis

  • Communication Server analysis

  • Unity Plug-in analysis

  • OpenHVR system analysis

  • Means of communication analysis

• Proof of Concept

• System design

  • Components cooperation

  • Configurator Tool wireframe prototype

  • REST API Design

  • API Security

• Implementation

  • Communication Server

  • Configurator Tool

  • Unity Plug-in

  • Implementation notes

  • Hardware used

  • Results

• Example application using OpenHVR

  • Testing entities

• User testing

  • Devices property measuring

  • Primary user test

• Conclusion

• Future works

• Bibliography

• Appendices

• List of Figures