The “Improve” Project : Architecture and Cars

Improve is a european project that intends to (surprisingly) improve the usability (hardware and software) of automotive and architectural applications, both VR and AR.

The goals are :

• To develop stereoscopic lightweight transparent eyeglasses with OLED-based micro projectors
• Improvements on micro emissive displays
• Improve on tiled large scale displays
• To enhance realism of the displayed virtual objects
• To improve user interaction with those displays through new interaction metaphors and tracking approaches
• To integrate and demonstrate large scale displays with near-to-the-eye displays in innovative collaborative mixed reality product development for industrial users

They already have developed three HMD prototypes :

Two of them are stereoscopic optical see-through head-mounted displays (HMD). One HMD is using very bright state-of-the-art OLED microdisplays and offers a resolution of 320×240 pixels, the second HMD is using LCoS microdisplays with a resolution of 800×600 pixel. Both are very lightweight and showing very good image quality and offering a good wearing comfort. The final prototype is a hand held stereoscopic optical see-though binoculars offering pixel based real light blocking mechanism.

They are also working on video streaming,  markerless tracking, tracking with markers, rendering and innovative interaction techniques.

I’ve always thought architecture would be one of the first field to adopt VR, but they hardly use 3D software at all.

The architectural scenarios are the following : On site sketching, In House Review, On Site Review.

The automotive scenarios are : Surface quality review and Re-Styling.

They did a relly great job at explaining their goals and achievements simply, which is something research projects often lack. Thanks for that!

The video on the other hand are not that useful.