Project 2 Proposal - Austin Phan

Motivation

The advent of autonomous vehicles is bringing a huge influx of data. Self-driving vehicles rely on sensors and cameras to make informed decisions about how to navigate the roads, generating terabytes of data every second. Processing this data in real-time presents a challenge for engineers and data scientists. Being able to look at given situations to understand how the car is processing information is important, and doing it in VR can offer developers an "in-vehicle view" of what is going on, and possibly identify issues that could cause fatal accidents.

Planned Milestones

• 4/04

  • Finalize Dataset Research, find workable dataset.

• 4/06

  • Research and begin work importing dataset into UE5

• 4/11

  • Finish importing dataset (to be defined later). 

• 4/13

  • Research viable ways to implement multiplayer into UE5/VR

• 4/18

  • Implement multi-user interaction in VR.

• 4/20

  • Continue trying to implement multi-user interaction (if issues persist)

• 4/25

  • Implement smooth locomotion/movement in world.

• 4/27

  • Implement working world manipulation.

• 5/02

  • Add items to interact with world (possibly light sources?)

• 5/04

  • Test and finalize packaging of application.

Potential Deliverables/Wiki Additions

• Tutorials and Documentation

  • Importing point cloud datasets into Unreal Engine 5

  • Implementing multi user collaboration in Unreal Engine 5.

• Pages

  • Create page about world generation from point cloud datasets

  • Implementation tool and other utilities for multiplayer. 

Class Activity (4/27 or 5/02)

• Compare 3D and VR visualization, with collaboration, assess multiplayer performance, latency and related issues.

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, but with additional focus towards collaboration this time.

The proposed project involves collaboration in VR

5 - One of the main focuses of this project will be to implement collaboration in Unreal Engine 5.

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 point cloud/LiDAR datasets in VR. 

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

3 - I'm a bit worried about figuring out how to implement VR collaboration in Unreal Engine, but I've allocated extra time to that section so hopefully everything else will be okay.

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

4 - I'll be evaluating Unreal Engine for VR datasets, but more importantly, evaluating the process for which multiplayer VR can be implemented.

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 

3 - Unreal has LiDAR point cloud support. Documentation lacks a bit more significantly in the development for collaboration department, which is a small concern.