Multi-user virtual reality on mobile phones

Project Overview

• This project allows 2 users use 2 android phones to connect to each other by TCP, then they can navigate and interact to each other in a virtual world. Both users use first-person-view to view the world, they can change their viewing direction by rotating the phone if the phone has gyroscope.
• Explanation of the picture: The triangle in the left phone represents the orientation and position of right phone.

Status

Implemented

• TCP connection between 2 phones and periodically update the information of the world( including the status of dynamic objects and status of the other user)
• Change viewing direction by gyroscope
• Built the scene by OpenSceneGraph for android phones.
• Users can do some actions on dynamic objects (such as open a door) and the other user can see the change.
• Allow users to press buttons to move their position

To-do

• Allow user to create geometries in the world and other users can see the created geometries
• Maybe try to use a PC as server to allow more than 2 users to connect, the loading might be too heavy for one phone to be a network server for many clients.
• Model modification support
• The translation computed by double integral of acceleration (acceleration data is retrieved from accelerometer of the phone) is not accurate enough due to the noise and the real-time requirement. Need to use other approaches to compute translation.

Software Developers:

• James Lue

Project Advisors:

• Jurgen Schulze