An Overview of Enhancing Distance Learning Through Emerging Augmented and Virtual Reality Technologies.

Although distance learning presents a number of interesting educational advantages as compared to in-person instruction, it is not without its downsides. We first assess the educational challenges presented by distance learning as a whole and identify 4 main challenges that distance learning currently presents as compared to in-person instruction: the lack of social interaction, reduced student engagement and focus, reduced comprehension and information retention, and the lack of flexible and customizable instructor resources. After assessing each of these challenges in-depth, we examine how AR/VR technologies might serve to address each challenge along with their current shortcomings, and finally outline the further research that is required to fully understand the potential of AR/VR technologies as they apply to distance learning.

Audio-Material Reconstruction for Virtualized Reality Using a Probabilistic Damping Model.

Modal sound synthesis has been used to create realistic sounds from rigid-body objects, but requires accurate real-world material parameters. These material parameters can be estimated from recorded sounds of an impacted object, but external factors can interfere with accurate parameter estimation. We present a novel technique for estimating the damping parameters of materials from recorded impact sounds that probabilistically models these external factors.

Towards Fully Mobile 3D Face, Body, and Environment Capture Using Only Head-worn Cameras.

We propose a new approach for 3D reconstruction of dynamic indoor and outdoor scenes in everyday environments, leveraging only cameras worn by a user. This approach allows 3D reconstruction of experiences at any location and virtual tours from anywhere. The key innovation of the proposed ego-centric reconstruction system is to capture the wearer's body pose and facial expression from near-body views, e.

Diffraction Kernels for Interactive Sound Propagation in Dynamic Environments.

We present a novel method to generate plausible diffraction effects for interactive sound propagation in dynamic scenes. Our approach precomputes a diffraction kernel for each dynamic object in the scene and combines them with interactive ray tracing algorithms at runtime. A diffraction kernel encapsulates the sound interaction behavior of individual objects in the free field and we present a new source placement algorithm to significantly accelerate the precomputation.

Effects of virtual acoustics on dynamic auditory distance perception.

Sound propagation encompasses various acoustic phenomena including reverberation. Current virtual acoustic methods ranging from parametric filters to physically accurate solvers can simulate reverberation with varying degrees of fidelity. The effects of reverberant sounds generated using different propagation algorithms on acoustic distance perception are investigated.