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IST Mixed Realities & New Imaging Frontiers cluster
(Image courtesy HHI)
Objectives and scope
The objective of this Action Line is to bridge the gap between real and virtual worlds for innovative applications. The focus is on the Reality-Virtuality continuum:
- Augmenting virtuality and bringing virtual worlds to life by enhancing realism and level of detail, introducing intelligence, making them persistent and reactive environments;
- Augmenting reality and fusing real and virtual universes by enhancing real environments for a range of applications going from wearable computing for navigation and industrial processes to programme production and interactive entertainment; and
- Discovering new sensory frontiers by addressing high definition, 3D, full space imaging, multisensory cues and very advanced display systems to create fully immersive environments distributed over heterogeneous networks and platforms in which users will be able to enjoy rich, multisensory experiences for virtual- or tele-presence.
Costs, real-time, human factors, control, protection and ethical issues should be considered.
Mixed Reality (MR) was chosen as a central theme because it captures some of the essential ingredients of today's post-computer-revolution society. The frontier between real and virtual is increasingly blurred, be it in film making, TV, games, shared communication spaces or even parts of the global economy. MR is considered to be an enabling technology for the future of media, noting that most attractive and modern media exploit some form of mixed reality. Within the not too distant future, MR will lead to new visual interfaces which are needed to move beyond the desktop paradigm. MR represents the convergence of research fields such as computer vision, computer graphics, and coding. It is intrinsically multi-disciplinary and constitutes therefore a good framework for collaborative projects. After important investment of community research in audio-visual representation and coding over the past 10 years (MPEG etc.) and significant activities in computer graphics, visualization, VR and computer vision, MR is a natural evolution in terms of combining the realism of real world pictures with the flexibility of computer graphics.
(Images courtesy STAR)
