Augmented Data Visualization for Research
Welcome to CS 1951T!
First class is Thursday, Jan 23.
Classes are Tuesdays and Thursdays 10:30 - 11:50 in CIT 101
Professor: David Laidlaw (email@example.com)
What is this class?
We will be exploring, testing, and evaluating AR/VR software that supports data visualization for researchers and scientists. We will document our findings and projects on the course wiki. We hope that this year's research will document and further the state of AR/VR technology. Our theme this year is on augmented data visualization software. Students are encouraged to build, test, and evaluate augmented, passthrough, or collaborative ways to visualize data. If you have questions, or have other VR scientific research project proposals you would like to build/eval, please send Melvin, Jakobi, and David a slack message.
What is the wiki?
The goal of the wiki is to give future AR/VR research developers a way to easily navigate the field and to identify shortcomings that need to be addressed as the field continues to grow. To guide this exploration, students will select two research projects over the semester pertaining to augmented/passthrough and data visualization AR/VR software and document their findings in the course wiki. We also require all students in the course to make several updates to improve the wiki throughout the semester.
What VR headsets will we use?
Each student will be lent a Meta Quest 3 for the duration of this course. Each box should come with a USB-C charging cable, two Meta Quest Touch Plus controllers, and an Adjustable Standard Facial Interface (preinstalled) to support using the Quest with glasses. It is your responsibility to ensure that these materials are well-maintained, and that no parts are missing by their return at the end of the semester. The Quest will be yours to explore, and while you may try gaming/entertainment applications in your free time, keep in mind that this course is focused on augmented scientific data visualization, and projects are expected to be academic/research-oriented.
While there are no strict prerequisites, programming experience will be useful if you decide to use AR/VR programming platforms such as A-Frame and Unity for your projects. CS 320 and CS 330 will be particularly useful in this course; knowledge of computer graphics (such as in CS 1230) is also recommended, however, not required.
The main assignments for this course are two projects and a final project contributing to the evaluation, exploration and/or creation of augmented data visualization. These projects will involve presentations, in-class activities, journal entries, and most importantly, contributions to the wiki (see Timeline for more details on projects and Syllabus for grading details).
Other homework includes deliverables, which are usually screenshots and completed feedback forms showing your participation in other class activities.
While there is no strict deadline for when hours must be logged, the goal is to have 140 hours by the end of the semester, with 10 hours each week as a recommended guideline so that you don't end up getting overwhelmed by an obscene number of hours packed in at the end of the semester.
Class attendance is mandatory.
Templates for creating software evaluations, tutorials, and parent pages