Project 1 Proposal - Austin Phan

Motivation

As humans continue to live on earth longer, we have an adverse effect on the surrounding ecosphere, which is including but not limited to plant life. Whether its deforestation, climate change, agricultural expansion, or movements to help regrow lost plant life, the surrounding ecosphere is constantly changing. In this project, I'll explore this change by viewing data captured by LiDAR and visualizing it in a virtual-reality world, allowing users to view data from a different angle, and understand the data in more detail.

Planned Milestones

2/14

• Research, download, and understand datasets.

• Figure out what each dataset shows, and what datasets can be used.

2/16

• Download Unity, setup and build a test environment to get used to how Unity works in VR Development.

• Start with a simple "hello world" program.

2/23

• Begin to import LiDAR Data, test terrain visualization.

2/28

• Import other ecosystem structure of LiDAR Data, overlay on top of terrain visualization.

3/02

• Implement ability to change time, and in turn, visualization.

• Class activity: have users explore different timeframes for a given area, and point out the more significant changes over time, similar to a "spot the difference" style experience.

3/07

• Make UI Tweaks, add a menu of sorts for easy access to functions.

3/09

• Add an information page to menu, including controls and how-to-use section.

Potential Deliverables/Wiki Additions

• Tutorials and Documentation

  • Unreal Engine, updating wiki pages with new information.

  • Creating 3d Models in Unreal Engine 

  • Documenting & Tutorials in Unreal Engine for creating worlds from LiDAR scanned datasets.

• Pages

  • Create page about world generation from LiDAR datasets

  • Comparison of different LiDAR data types and formats, as well as support (different file types and such)

Class Activity

• Users will first explore the world in VR

• Users will be directed to find specific areas in the data set where change occurs over a given time frame

• Users will document changes

• Users will reflect on experience in VR, noting intuitiveness of controls, and preferences to a normal “monitor” experience vs a headset-based experience.

Self Evaluation of Project Proposal

Questions/Evaluation Points

The proposed project clearly identifies deliverable additions to our VR Software Wiki

4 - I'll be exploring the applications of VR and development of LiDAR-3D Visualization.

The proposed project involves collaboration in VR

3 - The collaboration is less of multiplayer section and more of comparing results after experiencing visualization in VR.

The proposed project involves large scientific data visualization along the lines of the "Scientific Data" wiki page and identifies the specific data type and software that it will use

5 - I'll be visualizing extensive elevation and canopy height LiDAR data to visualize. 

The proposed project has a realistic schedule with explicit and measurable milestones at least each week and mostly every class

4 - I'm a bit worried about figuring out how to load the data into Unreal Engine, but I think the milestones are reasonable given the documentation that exists will help greatly.

The proposed project explicitly evaluates VR software, preferably in comparison to related software

5 - I'll be evaluating Unreal Engine 4 for VR, as well as the plugin linked below to see how the experience is for loading LiDAR files.

https://github.com/iwer/GeotiffLandscape

The proposed project includes an in-class activity, which can be formative (early in the project) or evaluative (later in the project) 

4 - See Class activity section.

The proposed project has resources available with sufficient documentation 

4 - there are Unreal engine tutorials for creating VR applications, as well as world generation from LiDAR.