I2R hosted the visit from DigiPen

The SSC 2009 incoming committee organised a lab tour for DigiPen to the Institute for Infocomm Research at Fusionopolis on the 3rd April 2009. A total of 70 students and staff from DigiPen participated. The visitors were given a tour of 4 labs run by the Personal 3D Entertainment Systems programme (P3DES) at I2R. The visit started with a short introduction to P3DES, and also included a call for SSC membership signups. Due to the number of participants, they were divided into 4 groups. Each group was given a chance to try out prototypes in the 4 labs. At the Human Factors Engineering Lab, the demonstration projected and tracked a user's body shape without having the user to wear special gear. The user could play various games in real-time. The visitors were given a glimpse of the future of real-time human face synthesis in the Avatar Lab, which was being set up to record and analyse human face expressions synchronised with speech. At the Home Virtual Reality Lab, the visitors played a DJ music game by performing gestures with bare hands to drive a virtual turntable, keeping in-step with the music beats. The prototype which drew the most attention was the Tennis Simulation in the Immersive Entertainment Lab. The user was immersed in a stereoscopic virtual tennis court, and could use an actual tennis racket to view and hit the ball being served by a Maria Sharopova simulacrum.