OE-2.1 Virtual Space & the Mechanics of Sight
You can define virtual space, position and orientation in three dimensions, and explain the visual pathway and the depth cues an AR/VR system must satisfy.
The course opens with human perception rather than hardware for a good reason: every display specification later in the syllabus exists to satisfy a limit of the eye. Depth cues are the heart of it - stereopsis is only one of many, which is why a flat photograph still reads as deep. Understand which cues a headset can supply and which it cannot, and the field's hardest problems become predictable rather than surprising.
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AR and VR: definitions and the distinction between them
Two things that get spoken about together and are not the same: one adds to what you see, the other replaces it. Getting the distinction firm now saves confusion in every topic below.
Understanding virtual space; defining visual space and content
What a virtual space is made of before any hardware appears. It is the abstraction the whole subject sits on, so it is worth being comfortable with it in the abstract.
Defining position and orientation in three dimensions
Six numbers describe where something is and which way it faces. Everything about motion sensing and interaction later reduces to measuring or changing these.
Navigation in virtual space
Moving through a space you are not physically in. The problem is harder than it sounds because the body expects motion cues that are not there.
Human senses and their relationship to output/input devices
The map from human perception to the devices that feed it. It is the organising idea for the next three topics, each of which takes one sense in turn.
The mechanics of sight and the visual pathway
The optics and the biology of seeing, taken before display hardware. Knowing the limits of the eye is what tells you which display specifications matter and which are marketing.
Spatial vision and depth cues
How you perceive distance, from several independent cues. Stereo separation is only one of them, which is why some depth still works with one eye closed.
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