Modified shutter glasses for projection and picture acquisition in virtual environments

Virtual reality (VR) can be extended to create a collaborative distributed environment over a physical network. However, such an environment can only be established if both the virtual objects and the other users can be seen simultaneously in real time. This requires a novel technique to overcome the contradicting requirements of darkness and light for image projection and video acquisition, respectively. In order to make an inexpensive and easy-to-build solution, a camera acquisition system and a stroboscopic light are added to an existing VR system. Modifications are made to existing shutter glasses to handle simultaneous projection and video acquisition. In such a solution, the method of projection in the VR system remains unmodified. This paper describes how to resolve the conflict between the darkness required for projection and sufficient lighting for video acquisition.