Time Machine: VERDUN 1916

Highly Immersive Virtual Reality System

Concept

Time Machine: VERDUN 1916 is a highly immersive Virtual Reality system simulating a time travel, specifically at the site of Verdun during one of the most impressive battle of the World War I.

This project is a collaborative work between students of two engineering schools of Laval in France: ESCIN specialized on computer graphics and ESIEA specialized on computer science and electronic.

Graphic Design

The 3 students from ESCIN worked on 3dsmax to design the virtual environment and animations. Realistic graphics was required to create a compelling immersive experience. 3D models and animations were then exported in Virtools, to create the simulation in real time.

Hardware Design

The "Time Machine chair" was designed to produce multimodal stimulations. The usual 3d Head Mounted Display (HMD) and sound system was complemented with a number of devices used to produce different sensations including tactile, vestibular, and smell stimuli.

To create our Time Machine, we modified a dentist chair and installed many actuators inside and around it. A microcontroller "Rabbit 2000" controls all the different electronic parts. This microcontroller is connected to a PC via Ethernet in order to synchronize actuators with the real time simulation. Timing constraints was one of the most challenging issues. Indeed, if the actuators were not in perfect synchronization with the animation (including random events taking place in the virtual environment), the feeling of immersion would significantly decrease.
As it was a student project, the economical aspect was also an important constraint; we thoroughly considered it and developed actuators with the best effect possible in regards to the budget allocated.

List of "sensations" or "effect" and the actuators we developed to simulate them:

Sensation	Actuator
Image	HMD z800 with tracking system for rotation of the point of view
Sound	Big headphone and subwoofer for low frequency
Vibration	Movements of the detist chair
Haptic/Contact	Mobile phone vibrators (around 40 inside the chair and 16 on a belt)
Haptic/Wind	Cheap fan for home use
Heat	heater included on the fan
Odors	Air pomp connected to hermetic box and pushing odors just in front of the nose

Mobile phone Vibrators are very cheap but very efficient to simulate moving objects on the body surface. The vibrators are embedded into a piece of wood to increase the surface of vibration. Each of them is connected separately to the microcontroller, which mean that the system is able to control each of the 56 vibrators independently. Vibrators on the belt simulate the passage of a big rat walking on the user's chest; vibrators on the chair simulate floor texture moving under the user's back.
The use of a fan had an unexpectedly strong positive effect on the immersion. The Time Machine was set-up on a small room, dark and isolated to avoid surrounding perturbation.

Awards

The Time Machine project won the 1st Prize of «Village de la création» at Laval Virtual 2007 (Laval, France); the 1st Prize by IVRC jury at Laval Virtual 2007 (Laval, France) and the 2nd Prize at IVRC 2007 (Gifu, Japan).