Ontario researchers are among 17 Canadians who have received an unlimited $ 30,000 grant from Meta’s Reality Lab Research to support their work.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg talks about the metaverse as if it were the future of the Internet.
This is a term that has been around for some time and continues to evolve. It sounds like the way people talked about the Internet in the 1980s, explains Daniel Vogel, who is a professor at the School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo.
But for Jian Zhao, it’s a medium that mixes the real and the virtual world.
Researcher Jian Zhao and his PhD students are studying different styles of interaction between virtual reality operators and their audiences.
Photo: (CBC / Doug Herbert)
Dr. Zhao’s research, which also works in the computer science department, focuses on how people and computers interact.
He says he wants to better understand how this connection can work in a more immersive environment like the Metauniverse.
A lot of information is displayed on desktops or mobile phones, but the metaverse is a growing new trend for displaying and exploring information. the researcher started.
“What interests me most in this area of research is how people become more immersed in data and how they research information. »
– Quote from Jian Zhao, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo
Zhao and his PhD students are currently studying different styles of interaction between virtual reality operators and their audiences. He says he wants to use the Meta grant to find ways to improve virtual reality technology and make it more immersive.
We want to explore the frustrations and difficulties faced by virtual reality operators and viewers to facilitate this communication, he said.
Spatial augmented reality
Researcher Daniel Vogel, for his part, uses projections called spatial augmented reality (RAS).
Imagine you have special building materials, such as paint or a tapestry made of pixels, he explains. With it, everything is able to display information, even walls, floors, glasses.
The researcher and his students use specialized projectors, cameras and calibrated software to make these projections. The necessary infrastructure was developed as part of a previous grant that Mr Vogel received.
Thanks to this new grant from Meta, he will be able to test different scenarios and purchase more equipment.
Researcher Daniel Vogel and his students use specialized projectors like the one in their research.
Photo: CBC / Carmen Groleau
According to Prof. Vogel, Meta’s unlimited grant demonstrates the value of Canadian talent and enables Meta to experiment with new ideas.
The grant also allows them to indirectly experiment with certain ideas – such as the one in my lab – that may not have short-term commercial viability. he says.
Researchers Daniel Vogel and Jian Zhao say the development of the metaverse is at an early stage and the path will be uneven. But their research can have an impact.
Our role as researchers is to try different things and think about some of the problems we may encounter in this new type of technology, says Vogel. Our goal is to work to solve these problems now.
With information from CBC News
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