The mixed around to lab of the University of Nottingham is Computer science School on Dhe.

This is actually the lab space where quite a few things happen.

So it's in a state of perpetual mess and chaos.

But this is the little piece off Santy we've carved out.

We grab the space to set up a virtual reality bay running off of I've, which is usually we use the vice system for any sort of virtual reality development.

Both cause the tech is pretty good.

The harder is pretty good.

But also it's the most open system for development.

Does say, opposed the Oculus and stuff like that.

Andi, it does allow you.

I will grab us a crop to use stuff like the five tracker, which allow you to bring in other objects, accessories and more interesting virtual reality interactions than you would in a close ecosystem, which is why we tend to use it more, an Oculus rather technologies.

Last time we saw you beat far, we were looking at scanning of miniatures, three D scanning miniatures for various uses on augmented reality storytelling.

We moved on trying to close the loop a little bit you know, take something physical, scan it into a digital asset that you can use in virtual worlds and stuff like that.

So, miracle in that video, we scanned a bunch of miniatures that people brought in.

We put those in a virtual museum so people could walk around them like Godzilla size.

Okay, we've gone from the physical to the digital.

Why not go back to the physical again?

So what we did is we started three d printing those miniatures.

You might recall this guy.

I think he was the most popular one website back into physical form at slightly different scales on.

Then I thought, OK, how do we push the envelope a little bit?

And what can we do with these things is, in fact, we're still just a hunk of plastic, depending on your printing technology.

But usual, be just that.

So we thought we'd go use a bit of tech to now start overlaying this photo Realistic.

Three D scans.

You miracle from the previous video back onto these physical objects is a little bit tricky because you have to know where this physical object is in space and there's various ways to do that.

But once you've got that and somehow you can skin this hunk of plastic with that photo realistic scan, you can have some very interesting interactions.

The key point there is locating How do you know where it is?

Well, the various technologies old in you to do this basically it comes back to locating objects in space, which is not quite assault problem.

I mean, we wish we had indoor GPS, but we're not quite there s so you can do things like, um, tracking with ultra wideband.

It's used widely in robotics.

You can do stuff with time of flight.

I mean, anybody who has used the recent via the control is the headsets attract somehow.

For example, this is ah, five tracker just effectively the controller without the control a bit on diesel, I get struck something in space just by attaching them to something and then just looking them.

So this now verbally can be brought into the e.

R.

You can use ah, newer optical tracking technologies, but those when they work the fantastic.

But getting them to work can be a bit tricky when you don't know what your final object will be or when that object is sort of malleable.

So for now, we have been using these in RVR experiences because they tie in with the rest of the ecosystem.

So one reason to do this would be too haptic.

Experience objects in different scares.

For example, here we have that miniature.

The original thing was, what, 28 millimeter scale?

About an inch tall.

Now we have something bigger on.

We can take that envy are on DDE.

Um interact with it at a larger scale Now, Okay, that's not a big step.

But if we take something different like, for example, the veil vessel virgin from Chatsworth House, the actual statue is about two meters tall.

I believe in here shares in comfortable palm size more and more museums, for example, which is one of the context we work with a lot.

What they do is they have now they're not really scanning the collection, so they have vast archives off three D models of things so you can interact with those online on screen in via the usual thing.

Walk around it.

But again, you can't touch it.

You can't actually really interact with it.

Things that would be at a different scale, like the veil of Esther's.

Much too large, the real thing.

Do something like this, or objects that are really one of a Kanye would be able to touch.

Like, say, the crown jewels, for example, you'd be able to interact with them.

We're in ways you'd never be allowed to, for example, putting on the ground jewels or see entire environments that buildings that don't exist.

There are limitations.

Technology V.

R.

Is has a few unsolved problems.

So seeing as we were using these trackers thes do have some issues.

So of course they need line of sight.

Just like the controllers.

They are a considerable physical object that you have to work around.

You can't.

You could just attach it to any object.

But then, no, all that objects have this handy sort of way.

You can attach them, and even if you do, what happens the first time you do that?

Somebody sees that.

Hand it to them.

What do they do?

They grab the track because I think it's a handy handhold.

But of course, what that means is, you brake line of sight on the tracking fails, so you need some howto work around that are sort of solution, and we'll see here some of the objects we ended up using from our using partners, because this was the probably the best place to launch these technologies taking, putting the trackers inside boxes.

The tracking works right through them, but he has some very practical benefits.

Nobody.

Well, nobody in with normal size has at least can possibly grab these trackers and fully include them from the vibe light houses.

One elephant of the room that haven't really mentioned is the three D printing on these objects.

Now some might say that is a solve problem.

Three D printing being ah, well traversed ecology at the moment, but it's not always the case.

For starters, you are trying to three D print three D scanned models, three D scan models.

Whatever technique you might use might be for granted, like we use for the for the miniatures or something.

Like a laser scanner, which was used to scan this engine, for example, they never produced optimized models, optimized models as the kind you would make from the ground up for, say, use in games or animations.

Stuff like that those models always need some clean up.

They have millions of virtue is more than they would need to be optimized on.

Often the models are not ready to use.

They still have gaps in them.

They still have errors, stuff that really doesn't help with the any three D printing technique.

So you have a few ways to go about that.

Either you fix the model or you try and use techniques that ignore them.

In this case, for example, which was a sort of easy object to fix.

This was printable on the standard FTM printer and out of process layer by layer on, everything works fine.

That's just by depositing material.

And this is the kind of commercial three D printing technology that you can have in the home right now, so most organizations do have access to it.

But some things so complicated as the Eagle aero engine, where you have a lot of very small parts that are not necessary very well supported.

The problem with an FTM printer is that you do need to support the overhangs and the objects that are not connected during the printing, and then remove those supports quite the job.

This one actually was printed by our partners in the advanced manufacturing Building with one of the That means, if I get this right centering printer, I believe on dhe.

Those are very nice in the sense that they use a laser to center powder plastic powder inside.

Basically been a part of the entire object while it's being made is suspended in that powder, and you come out with this fantastically detailed and way stronger than it looks.

Three.

D model.

All these fine bits are actually exactly as they came out.

The model.

They may look like errors, but the no errors in the three D printing process.

Rather, they are errors in the laser three D scanning process that we used.

Sadly, this is not quite ready for domestic use, but maybe we'll get there.

Even with these technologies they're not.

There are objects that are not suitable for three D printing, so there is ah, halfway house that you can use on.

That was an empty acrylic box.

When you have something that you can't three d print, but you still want people to be able to interact with it in V r ng, some way or what we did was basically place a tracker inside this box.

So we have a trackable box on DDE in V.

R.

We can show a glass box or something similar the exact same dimensions.

But inside this in V.

R, we can place any three D model we want.

Whatever it is something we can't print.

We can change it dynamically.

Whatever you want.

You can get the halfway house where people can pick this box up in the real world, picking it up in via bring it up to the face rotating idea any angle they want, even the bottom, because bottom can be see through N v E.

R.

And get that much closer to an object they would not normally be able to experience.

It might be as raising something very large now again in the palm of the hand.

Almost so.

It is a bit of a compromise, but interesting one of that.

What environment you put him house.

It'll work for our purposes and to sort of begin off with museum context.

Since we've got objects from the collection of the Darby Museum, not gallery, we've placed them in sort of the setting off the warehouse of the museum because, after all, this is giving you access to stuff that you normally would not even have to be able to see it.

A museum any museum can that most have usually less than half of its collection on display any time.

So we used the Unity game engine, which is together with UN really probably the most popular game engine, or rather, at this point, experience engine to make virtual reality Experience is pretty straightforward environment.

Get, have give us everything we needed to, ah, pull together the various disparate parts of this.

It's effectively, really a standard virtual reality.

Set up the biggest problem you might have for hardware specifications having after USB ports because each one of these trackers requires its own USB dongle, which means you really quickly run out of them.

And you didn't even realize it where it is in comparison to the other one.

So, ideally, get something like that.

As you can see our three different heights around the model, then that will create a spouse point cloud.