Computer graphics processing and selective visual display system – Display driving control circuitry – Controlling the condition of display elements
Reissue Patent
1999-10-07
2003-10-28
Huynh, Ba (Department: 2173)
Computer graphics processing and selective visual display system
Display driving control circuitry
Controlling the condition of display elements
C345S502000, C709S207000, C709S217000
Reissue Patent
active
RE038287
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates generally to a computer network data distribution and retrieval system capable of enabling the creation and presentation of a large, variably detailed, three-dimensional virtual reality world with data stored on distributed network sources and obtained by computer network transmission. A virtual world created using the data distribution and retrieval system of the present invention may be accessed by one or more users concurrently. The invention further relates to a method of user access to this virtual world, and a method of user interaction with objects and with other users in the world.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The creation of virtual reality (VR) worlds using data stored on sources distributed across a computer network, such that individual computer users may “enter” the VR world by accessing the computer network, has been a longtime goal of computer scientists. Of particular interest are VR worlds that may reside on wide area computer networks such as the Internet.
Although hypothetical VR worlds that users may enter and interact with—and which are indistinguishable from actual reality—have been shown in television shows such as “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “Mad About You,” these representations, like most popular representations of VR technology, merely use videotape special effects to create an illusion of a virtual world. In contrast, a true virtual world is one in which every object, including a user's image, is digitally coded and rendered.
A more authentic virtual world was used as a critical dramatic device in “Disclosure,” the recent movie based on the Michael Crichton novel of the same name. In that world, a user could retrieve data from electronic files by entering a digitally rendered filing room (representing a data storage device), opening a rendered filing cabinet (directory), and removing rendered sheets of paper (documents) stored in rendered manila folders (folders). Further, the user saw a digital image of himself and other users in the world. Like most of Crichton's work, this representation of VR technology was just barely fictional.
However, to create its great level of user immersion in the VR world, the fictional VR system in “Disclosure” required that the user don a special full-body suit equipped with goggles and motion/position sensors. Further, the user could only access the world via a special gimbaled platform to which the suit was attached. Indeed, the use of goggles, gloves, and other apparatus is considered to be a necessary condition of virtual reality. It is understood for the purposes of the present invention that the discussion pertains to two-dimensional representations of a three-dimensional environment. Thus, the present invention relates to a virtual world that may be accessed solely via a flat display screen, although the use of other interface devices such as goggles, gloves, or VR suites is not precluded.
While recent advances in computer hardware and telecommunications technology have enabled the creation of rudimentary virtual worlds that may be accessed via a computer network, there remain several significant obstacles to creating a world in which motion is experienced in real-time and in which users can interact with inanimate objects in the world and with other users. The most significant problem with creating a large virtual reality world is that a world sufficiently large and detailed to be interesting contains more data than can be transmitted to the user's computer in a reasonable amount of time. In addition, even with the tremendous advances in microprocessor speed, network speed, and data storage capability of personal computers, the amount of data and data processing required to create an interesting virtual world overwhelms currently available systems.
Previous attempts to create a large virtual reality world on a computer network, specifically the Internet, have been unable to clear this technological hurdle and accommodate the extensive data that current VR technology requires. Two current approaches to the problem that fail in different ways are current VRML implementation and Alpha World.
Currently, the most popular method of sending three-dimensional scenes across the Internet is using the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML). VRML's operating principle is that every object located in a particular scene is described fully by data contained in an ASCII text file. When a user wants to enter this scene, under current implementation the entire file is transferred en masse over the network to the user's computer at one time. An application program on the user's computer can then access and manipulate the text contained in this file to render the three-dimensional scene. Once the scene has been rendered, the user can move around in this world and interact with objects contained within it.
There are several problems with the current VRML implementations. The greatest flaw is that data is not efficiently transferred over the network. Also, the data storage and processing limitations of currently available personal computers limits the complexity of the scene. Finally, current VRML implementations require the user's computer to do a lot of unnecessary work.
These current VRML implementations are inefficient in its use their network resources because they do not differentiate between relevant and irrelevant information. Each VRML file contains all of the data necessary to render completely every aspect of a particular scene. Although some of the objects coded by the data will be seen by the user at any one time, many more of the coded objects either are too far away from the user to be visible, are outside the user's cone of vision and therefore not visible, or are hidden from the user's view behind other objects. Thus, a lot of valuable time and resources are spent on transferring to the user's computer and subsequent processing of data that is unused and unnecessary at any given time.
Also, the large data files needed to represent all objects in an entire scene take a long time to transfer over the network. The long transfer time causes the user to experience long data transfer delays when entering each new scene. Further, once the data files transferred, they are unwieldy for even the fastest computers to process. Thus, there are often long processing delays when the user moves about the scene. These seemingly interminable delays significantly detract from the virtual reality experience.
Another problem with the current VRML implementations is that network delays grow rapidly as the complexity of a scene is increased. If a scene has twice as much detail (e.g., twice as many objects), it will take twice as long to transfer across the network the data needed to create the scene. The scene designer faces an intractable problem when determining how much detail to put into a given scene. If too little detail is included, users who have fast network connections or who are willing to tolerate delays will not get as much graphic data as they would like. The virtual world is not as interesting to them. But, as more detail is included to make the scene interesting to this first group of users, other users with slower network connections or with computers that cannot render highly detailed worlds will be forced to wait a long time to receive information that their computers cannot display at an acceptable speed. Thus, regardless of how much detail is included in the scene, someone is bound not to have an enjoyable VR experience.
Also, these current VRML implementations place more demands on the user's computer than is necessary. First, the user's computer must store all of the data contained in each VRML file either in active memory (RAM) or cache it to disk, both of which slows the processing. Even worse, before rendering the scene, the computer must prioritize the data to determine what parts of the scene should be displayed, discarding the irrelevant data. This can be a time consuming process. Very few comp
Freedman Aaron
Neri Mark L.
Huynh Ba
RealityWave, Inc.
Shea II Timothy J.
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