Real-Time Omnidirectional Stereo Rendering: Generating 360° Surround-View Panoramic Images for Comfortable Immersive Viewing.

Surround-view panoramic images and videos have become a popular form of media for interactive viewing on mobile devices and virtual reality headsets. Viewing such media provides a sense of immersion by allowing users to control their view direction and experience an entire environment. When using a virtual reality headset, the level of immersion can be improved by leveraging stereoscopic capabilities. Stereoscopic images are generated in pairs, one for the left eye and one for the right eye, and result in providing an important depth cue for the human visual system. For computer generated imagery, rendering proper stereo pairs is well known for a fixed view. However, it is much more difficult to create omnidirectional stereo pairs for a surround-view projection that work well when looking in any direction. One major drawback of traditional omnidirectional stereo images is that they suffer from binocular misalignment in the peripheral vision as a user's view direction approaches the zenith / nadir (north / south pole) of the projection sphere. This paper presents a real-time geometry-based approach for omnidirectional stereo rendering that fits into the standard rendering pipeline. Our approach includes tunable parameters that enable pole merging - a reduction in the stereo effect near the poles that can minimize binocular misalignment. Results from a user study indicate that pole merging reduces visual fatigue and discomfort associated with binocular misalignment without inhibiting depth perception.

StickySchedule: An Interactive Multi-user Application for Conference Scheduling on Large-scale Shared Displays.

Scheduling conferences is a common task in both research and industry, which requires relatively small groups to collaborate and negotiate in order to solve an often-large logistical problem with many nuances. For large conferences, the process can take days and it is traditionally a manual procedure performed using physical tools such as whiteboards and sticky notes. We present the design and implementation of StickySchedule, a multi-user application for use on interactive large-scale shared displays to better enable groups to organize large conference-scheduling data. To evaluate our tool, we present observations from novice users, and authentic use cases with expert feedback from organizers who are heavily involved in large conference scheduling. The main contributions of our work are documenting the collaborative and competitive aspects of conference scheduling, creating a tool that incorporates successful features and addresses identified issues with prior works, and verifying the usefulness of our tool by observing and discussing a variety of use cases, in both collocated and remote-distributed settings.

System selectivity cube: a 3D visualization tool for comparing the selectivity of gas chromatography, supercritical-fluid chromatography, high-pressure liquid chromatography, and micellar electrokinetic capillary chromatography systems.

A three-dimensional visualization tool termed the system selectivity cube (SSC) has been developed to aid in the selection of chromatography systems. The most effective way to change the resolution of a complex mixture is to change the selectivity of the separation. The SSC allows efficient identification of systems of differing selectivity. Our approach is based on comparisons of the energetics of two systems and in this way is somewhat akin to the kappa-kappa plots of Horvath et al. Our comparisons, however, are based on linear solvation energy relationships (LSERs) or other multiparameter models of retention. Our approach unifies LSERs, kappa-kappa plots, and the "effective selectivity" concept introduced by Zhao and Carr. The utility and versatility of the SSC is demonstrated with LSERs for 74 micellar electrokinetic chromatography (MEKC) systems taken from the literature. The SSC groups those systems which provide little or no difference in selectivity and those systems which do differ in their selectivities. We anticipate that this approach will be useful for selecting replacement columns, systems that may offer better results for difficult separations, and orthogonal phases for 2D gas chromatography (GC) and reversed phase liquid chromatography (RPLC) separations.