MOLDING AND ANCHORING PHYSICALLY CONSTRAINED VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS TO REAL-WORLD ENVIRONMENTS

摘要

An “Anchored Environment Generator” generates a physically constrained virtual environment that is molded and anchored to a real-world environment around a user (or multiple users). This molding and anchoring of the physically constrained virtual environment ensures that at least a portion of the physically constrained virtual environment matches tactile truth for one or more surfaces and objects within the real-world environment. Real objects and surfaces in the real-world environment may appear as different virtual objects, and may have different functionality, in the physically constrained virtual environment. Consequently, users may move around within the physically constrained virtual environment while touching and interacting with virtual objects in the physically constrained virtual environment. In some implementations, the physically constrained virtual environment is constructed from virtual building blocks that are consistent with a theme-based specification (e.g., French bistro, space station, starship, alternate real-world environments, alien world, apocalyptic wasteland, medieval village, hospital, castle, etc.).

主权项

1. A computer-implemented process for constructing virtual environments, comprising:
using a computer to perform process actions for: generating environmental information by scanning a real-world environment to classify geometry of surfaces and objects within that environment; receiving a master set of virtual building blocks, each virtual building block including a plurality of characteristics and including semantic and geometric constraints relating to the virtual building blocks; procedurally molding a physically constrained virtual environment by iteratively optimizing a layout of an automatically selected variable subset of the virtual building blocks relative to a scene-specific cost function; each iteration of optimized layout of the physically constrained virtual environment being consistent with the characteristics and constraints of the subset of virtual building blocks, and the environmental information of the real-world environment; the scene-specific cost function being derived for each iteration from the characteristics and constraints of the subset of virtual building blocks in combination with the environmental information; displaying the physically constrained virtual environment via a display device, such that at least a portion of the physically constrained virtual environment is anchored to the real-world environment in a way that at least partially matches tactile truth for one or more surfaces and objects within the real-world environment.