Building a Driving Simulator with Parallax Barrier Displays Christoph Schinko 1 , Markus Peer 2 , Daniel Hammer 2 , Matthias Pirstinger 2 , Cornelia Lex 2 , Ioana Koglbauer 2 , Arno Eichberger 2 , Jürgen Holzinger 3 , Eva Eggeling 1 , Dieter W. Fellner 1 and Torsten Ullrich 1 1 Fraunhofer Austria Research GmbH / Institut für ComputerGraphik & Wissensvisualisierung, TU Graz, Graz, Austria 2 Institut für Fahrzeugtechnik, TU Graz, Graz, Austria 3 AVL List GmbH, Graz, Austria Keywords: Driving Simulator, Parallax Barrier, Optimization. Abstract: In this paper, we present an optimized 3D stereoscopic display based on parallax barriers for a driving sim- ulator. The overall purpose of the simulator is to enable user studies in a reproducible environment under controlled conditions to test and evaluate advanced driver assistance systems. Our contribution and the focus of this article is a visualization based on parallax barriers with (I) a-priori optimized barrier patterns and (II) an iterative calibration algorithm to further reduce visualization errors in- troduced by production inaccuracies. The result is an optimized 3D stereoscopic display perfectly integrated into its environment such that a single user in the simulator environment sees a stereoscopic image without having to wear specialized eye-wear. 1 INTRODUCTION A parallax barrier is a device placed in front of a dis- play enabling it to show stereoscopic, or multiscopic images without the need for the viewer to wear 3D glasses. Multiscopy differs from stereoscopy in that it displays multiple angles at once, allowing a viewer to see the content from different angles – not just a left- eye / right-eye angle. The parallax barrier consists of a material with a set of precision slits, or a translucent material with an opaque pattern, allowing each eye to see a different set of pixels. With this separation of the pixels it is possible to create an autostereoscopic display – a display without the need for glasses. This effect is illustrated in Figure 1. The intended purpose for the parallax barrier tech- nology in this context is an autostereoscopic display system for a driving simulator. It consists of a mod- ified MINI Countryman chassis with eight liquid- crystal displays (LCDs) mounted around windscreen and front side windows. Four 55inch LCDs are placed radially around the hood of the car in a slanted an- gle. Two 23inch LCDs are used for each of the two front side windows. The four LCDs in the front are equipped with parallax barriers made of 2cm thick acrylic glass to minimize strain caused by the slanted angle. Each barrier is printed with a custom-made striped pattern, which is the result of an optimiza- tion process. The displays are connected to a cluster of four “standard” computers with powerful graph- ics cards. In order to account for movement of the driver’s head inside the car, an eye-tracking system from SmartEye consisting of two cameras with in- frared flashes is installed on the dashboard of the car. The position-depended rendering of the simula- tion scenario is performed on a cluster using the In- stantReality framework. Figure 1: An autostereoscopic display can be realized us- ing a parallax barrier. The barrier is located between the eyes (visualized in blue and red) and the pixel array of the display. It blocks certain pixels for each eye, which results in the eyes seeing only disjoint pixel columns (at least in an optimal setting). If the display is fed with correct image data, the user sees a stereo image. The free parameters (to optimize) are its line distance l d and its line width l w . Schinko, C., Peer, M., Hammer, D., Pirstinger, M., Lex, C., Koglbauer, I., Eichberger, A., Holzinger, J., Eggeling, E., Fellner, D. and Ullrich, T. Building a Driving Simulator with Parallax Barrier Displays. DOI: 10.5220/0005711302810289 In Proceedings of the 11th Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications (VISIGRAPP 2016) - Volume 1: GRAPP, pages 283-291 ISBN: 978-989-758-175-5 Copyright c  2016 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved 283