Activity Log

Week of 5/7 - 5/13 (8 hours total)

5/13 — 4 — created a poster with AR results for the public final demos

5/12 — 4 — debugged, installed demo applications onto iPhone X for public final demo

Week of 4/30 to 5/6 (7 hours total)

5/2 — 3 — updated wiki items, reorganized some pages

5/1 — 4 — did Jen and Charles' tutorials on ARKit/ARCore

Week of 4/23 to 4/29 (11 hours total)

4/29 — 2 — wrote image recognition application in ARKit

4/26 — 2 — finished bouncing ball application, but with limitations—needs to register walls first before being able to play (can't do dynamic tracking)

4/24 — 6 — attempted to develop a "bouncing ball" application using ARKit's recent vertical plane detection

4/23 — 1 — added A-Frame to Manuscript > Comparisons

Week of 4/16 to 4/22 (7 hours total)

4/21 — 3 — gave AR tutorials to group of friends, got general feedback

4/20 — 2 — compiled results from in class survey

4/19 — 2 — Led in-class AR tutorials (plane tracking and objects)

Week of 4/9 to 4/15 (4 hours total)

4/10 — 4 — caught up on journal work, activity log, upcoming deadlines, etc.

Week of 4/2  to 4/8 (11 hours total)

4/8 — 2 — added ambient lighting matching  and textures to application

4/7 — 5 — wrote tutorial for ARKit plane tracking and visualization

4/2 — 4 — created "air-painting" application that polls the phone's position in 3D space and plots a point every time, giving the user the ability to draw in 3D space

Week of 3/26 to 4/1 (0 hours total)

Spring Break

Week of 3/19 to 3/25 (10.5 hours total)

3/22 — 1 — contributed information to the AR page under Related Technology

3/21 — 4 — created first ARKit application (plane tracking and visualization) from scratch following a tutorial

3/20 — 4 — enrolled in Apple's developer program, installed iOS 11 beta on iPhone, set up XCode environment

3/20 — 1.5 — began ARKit research, watched WWDC announcement 2017 of ARKit

Week of 3/12 to 3/18 (9 hours total)

3/16 — 4 — installed and ran similar tutorials on both platforms to get a grasp for differences in setup difficulty, ease of use, etc.

3/14 — 5 — researched each of the development softwares found under VR Development Software, with particular emphasis on CryEngine, Lumberyard

Week of 3/5 to 3/11 (11 hours total)

3/8 — 3 — reran A-Frame on Google Cardboard, ironed out some kinks to make it work well on mobile

3/7 — 8 — wrote two A-Frame tutorials, Hello World and a VR block engine (filed under Home > Tutorials > AFrame)

Week of 2/26 to 3/4 (9 hours total)

2/29 — 2 — reran CS123 final project

2/27 — 5 — went to graphics lab, troubleshot the Vive there, played with SteamVR again

2/27 — 2 — tested out A-Frame for the first time, read up on the A-Frame blog

Week of 2/19 to 2/25 (9 hours total)

2/24 — 2 — last day of tutorials

2/22 — 2 — continued to implement tutorials

2/21 — 4 — started to implement three tutorials from https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/video-tutorials

2/20 — 1 — experimented with Unreal Engine, set up software

Week of 2/12 to 2/18 (10 hours total)

2/15 — 1 — started Blender page with description and basic overview

2/13 — 7 — created coffee cup in Blender after watching a tutorial and debugging lots :(

2/12 — 2 — installed Blender on device

Week of 2/5 to 2/11 (8.5 hours total)

2/10 — 0.5 — created VR in medicine page

2/7 — 4 — looked into IrisVR, built environment, ran demos in Bootcamp (took forever)

2/6 — 1 — watched TED talk on how virtual reality's impact in the pharmaceutical sector

2/5 — 1 — compiled list of relevant research papers

2/5 — 2 — investigated the state of VR in medicine

Week of 1/29 to 2/4 (9.5 hours total)

1/31 — 1.5 — investigated/read through articles and watched videos on browser VR efforts, including Mozilla VR and Supermedium, as well as frameworks such as A-Frame and three.js

1/31 — 1.5 — started writing VR Modeling Software page, added VR in medicine subpage

1/29 — 1 — set up journal, read through resources on this website

1/29 — 2 — read through precursors/early attempts at virtual reality; got up to speed on the current state of VR

1/29 — 2 — watched some VR TED talks (1, 2, 3, 4)

1/29 — 1.5 — reviewed VR lectures from CS123, reviewed VR final project from last year

Contact info, skills, interests

Kyle Cui, kyle_cui@brown.edu, (408) 813-2820, experience in software engineering (CS32 & 33), web development, computer graphics (CS123), and software management on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Particularly interested in VR in professional, non-CS fields such as heath and medicine.

Progress Report 2

Deliverables

1. Overview of A-Frame (under VR Development Software)

2. In-depth tutorials on A-Frame  (Hello World, simple block-based engine) (under VR Development Software > A-Frame/WebVR > Tutorials)

3.  Comparison with other software (under Manuscripts > Comparisons) (in progress)

Progress Report

Deliverables

1. Began VR Modeling Software page, created entry for Blender.

2. Created VR in medicine page (under Literature), populated with relevant academic papers (to be expanded)

Activities

1. Experimented with A-Frame, a browser-based virtual reality framework that plays well with lower end machines and cheaper virtual reality devices like Google Cardboard

2. Explored different applications of virtual reality for more non-computer science applications, including academia, medicine, etc. 

Plan

February 15

Deliverables:

• • Documentation on AFrame (under VR Development Software)

Activities:

• • Read up on documentation (1 hour)

  • Install, run tutorials (1 hour)

  • Try to render more advanced scenes/objects by following Youtube tutorials, user forums, etc. (3-4 hours)

  • Fill in findings on website (1 hour)

February 22

Deliverables:

• • Add additional papers/literature to VR in medicine (under VR in medicine)

  • Compile a list of common medicinal VR software/tools currently in use and future software currently in development (under VR in medicine)

Activities:

• • Research more on the state of virtual reality in hospitals, med schools, etc. (2-3 hours) [relevant to deliverable 1]

  • Run any available demos/watch demo videos of software tools currently in use in the medicinal industry (2-3 hours) [relevant to deliverable 1 and 2]

February 27

Deliverables:

• • Documentation on Blender (under VR Development Software)

Activities:

• • Research Blender basics (1 hour)

  • Install Blender, run a simple Hello World Blender tutorial (1-2 hours)

  • Test further Blender features, run more advanced tutorials, play around with the software to get a feel for it (3 hours) 

March 1

Deliverables:

• • Expand on comparisons between different VR development softwares (under VR Development Software)

Activities:

• • Research each of the development softwares found under VR Development Software, with particular emphasis on CryEngine, Lumberyard (3-4 hours) 

  • Install and run similar tutorials on both platforms to get a grasp for differences in setup difficulty, ease of use, etc. (4 hours)

  • Fill in webpage with findings, under Comparisons (1 hour)

March 6

Deliverables:

• • Expand Related Technology page

Activities:

• • Research predominant augmented reality software kits and applications, including ARCore and ARKit (2 hours)

  • Install and run tutorials on an AR platform (most likely ARKit), compare with similar experiences on VR platforms (2-3 hours)

  • Write up findings, including current state of AR, software development platforms on AR, and in-depth comparison with VR for different applications (2-3 hours)