Course Code: CS560
Course Name: Virtual and Augment Reality Systems
Prerequisites: None.

Preamble/Objectives: In recent times, VR and AR systems and applications are emerging as among the most important fields of computing. The trend is likely to become more prominent with the rollout of the 5G technology, which aims to promote VR and AR applications in education, healthcare and entertainment, among others. Though, the areas of AR/VR in themselves are not very new, recent advancements in the hardware and software technologies have made it feasible to deploy these systems for ubiquitous usage. Therefore, it would be beneficial for the students to get exposure to these emerging fields of study and to understand the practical system design aspects, which is the aim of this course.
Syllabus: Introduction: VR/AR experience; role of human sensory organs; hardware; software; interaction; Overview of interactive software development life cycle; Computer graphics: 3D pipeline; overview of pipeline stages; Computer vision: basic representation techniques; overview of object detection and recognition; introduction to SLAM; Immersive content delivery: Representation and projection techniques for 360 video, stereoscopic multimedia content; Basic HTTP-based adaptive streaming architectures (DASH,HLS); adaptive FoV-based streaming; 360 video delivery over CDNs; Edge-Cloud support for VR/AR applications; Future AR/VR applications (holoteleportation, telepresence etc); System design and implementation: Unity; VR and AR SDKs; case studies on VR and AR systems.
Texts: 1. LaValle, Steven, Virtual reality. [free online book. Can be downloaded from http://lavalle.pl/vr/] 2016.
2. LaViola, J.J., Kruijff, E., Bowman, D., McMahan, R. & Poupyrev, I, 3D User Interfaces: Theory and Practice. Addison Wesley Professional, 2017.
References: 1. Jerald, Jason, The VR book: Human-centered design for virtual reality. Morgan & Claypool., 2015.
2. Forsyth, D. A. & Ponce, J, Computer Vision: A Modern Approach, Pearson, 2012.
3. Bhattacharya, S, Computer Graphics, Oxford University Press, 2015.
4. Bhattacharya, S, Human-Computer Interaction: User-Centric Computing for Design, McGraw-Hill India, 2019.