The Touring Machine

The Computer Graphics and User Interfaces Laboratory

Steven Feiner, Blair MacIntyre, Tobias Höllerer, and Anthony Webster

Columbia University
Computer Graphics and User Interfaces Lab

Example Pictures

Each thumbnail image is a link to the originally captured (mostly VGA resolution) image in TIFF format. Note that the gamma values for the TIFF images are not adjusted. The images need to be processed (gamma, contrast) before they can be used. Please contact Prof. Steven Feiner if you are interested in obtaining permission to use the images.

© Computer Graphics and User Interfaces Lab, Columbia University

ISWC '97 Paper Footage:

Prototype campus information system. The user wears a backpack and headworn display, and holds a handheld display and its stylus.
This dummy head was used to capture the following images through our headworn display. A camera in the right eye socket captures what a user wearing the display would see.
View shot through the see-through headworn display, showing campus buildings with overlaid names. Labels increase in brightness as they near the center of the display.
A view of the Philosophy Building with the "Departments" menu item highlighted.
After the "Departments" menu item is selected, the department list for the Philosophy Building is added to the world, arrayed about the building. The three figures show the label animation sequence:
(a) a fraction of a second after selection...
(b) approximately half a second later, and...
(c) after the animation has finished
Selecting the "Departments" menu item causes an automatically-generated URL to be sent to the web browser on the handheld computer, containing the department list for the Philosophy Building.
Actual home page for the English and Comparative Literature department, as selected from either the generated browser page or the department list in the augmented world.


Video Footage, October '97:

All these images show a line of debug information about the currently received GPS data in the bottom half of the screen. The first part gives the current location relative to a reference point on campus, and the second part gives status information about the GPS satellites that are currently visible, including their ID numbers.

A view from the steps of Low Library facing to the North West of Columbia's Campus. The user is focusing on St. Paul's Chapel, whose label is selected accordingly. The nearby Fayerweather and Buell buildings are also labeled.
A view of Columbia's statue of Alma Mater seen from the western top part of the steps in front of Low Library.
This image shows Low Library's front view as seen from the middle of "campus walk", the main west-to-east pathway across the campus. Currently selected is the statue of Alma Mater. Note that the labels lined up above Alma Mater refer to buildings in a straight line behind Low Library. They are drawn at the center of their respective buildings, taking into account the correct height of and distance to their building.
The user is turning right from the (still selected) Schermerhorn building to take a look at St. Paul's Chapel, Buell, and Fayerweather. Note the (slightly) different relationship of the three latter buildings' labels as compared to the first image in this set due to a different observer's position.
The Buell building is about to become selected, as shown by the yellow color of its label.
The user dwelled on the Buell building long enough to select it. Its menu line has appeared underneath the toplevel menu.
This image shows the Kent Building and the departments associated with it (East Asian Languages and Cultures, Middle East Languages and Cultures, and Religion).


Acknowledgments

This research was supported in part by the Office of Naval Research under Contract N00014-97-1-0838; the National Tele-Immersion Initiative; hardware and software gifts from Intel, Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs and Microsoft; the New York State Center for Advanced Technology in Computers and Information Systems under Contract NYSSTF-CAT-92-053; and NSF Grant CDA-92-23009.


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Please send comments to Tobias Höllerer at <htobias@cs.columbia.edu>