VR Car Driving Simulator

Project Proposal

Faish AlAhmed
07/2019
Contents
Description of the Project.................................................................................................................................... 3
Description of the Deliverables......................................................................................................................... 5
Brief Description of the Problem...................................................................................................................... 6
System Architecture.......................................................................................................................................... 7
Implementation.................................................................................................................................................. 7
Brief explanation of how the project will be evaluated..........................................................................7
Hardware............................................................................................................................................................... 7
Visualization Component............................................................................................................................ 7
Input/output Devices................................................................................................................................... 7
Software................................................................................................................................................................. 8
Oculus SDK....................................................................................................................................................... 8
3D Models (3rd Party)................................................................................................................................. 8
Unity3D.............................................................................................................................................................. 8
Project delivery plan........................................................................................................................................... 10
List of resources required................................................................................................................................ 10
List of relevant books and article/publications (at least 6)...............................................................11

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 VR Car Driving Simulator

Description of the Project

In a VR system, a computer generated world is displayed by means of a helmet mounted
display (HMD). A head tracker measures the position of the head and the direction the
subject is looking at. The images are then presented to both eyes separately, from the
viewpoint of the head in the direction the head is facing. Since images are presented to both
eyes stereoscopically, the subject experiences depth which enhances the experience. Since
the eyes are covered in most VR systems, the subject is unable to see the actual
surroundings: only the virtual world is experienced and this greatly enhances immersion.

VR systems have been around since the seventies of the 20th century. The availability to
the general public has been low because of the high cost and technical insufficiencies, for
example, narrow field of view, inaccurate and slow head tracking that increases the lag
between head movements and graphical updates, and poor resolution. The more expensive
systems are used in military training. However, the VR technology has not become popular
in games or simulators. An important reason for that, apart from the cost, is the cyber
sickness that often occurs while using a HMD.

The Oculus Rift is the most recent development in VR that promises a larger field of view,
high resolution, fast head tracking and less cyber sickness for a very affordable price. It is
tempting to use a quality low cost VR system like that in a driving simulator for driver
training. It would reduce the cost of the simulator because a complex and expensive
projection system is not required. You would have a very natural 3D vision with real
stereoscopy. The experience of realism would be higher compare to regular driving
simulators. Driver training in a VR simulator could potentially be more attractive for young
learner drivers than traditional driver training because of the experience it can provide.

Virtual reality (VR) arcades are popping up to let people experience the virtual worlds
without having to buy an expensive VR glasses

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Global location-based VR entertainment will, in fact double to $2.4 billion this year and
grow to over $8 billion by 2022.

And 92.32% consumers are willing to experience the virtual reality technology according
to the Google’s proportion.[2]

Graph 1: VR Revenue Forecast

The Oculus Rift based virtual reality driving simulation described in this work is an
immersive 3D virtual reality simulator, which gives the driver a near-realistic driving
experience. Oculus Rift is a low-latency 360° head tracking virtual reality head-mounted-
display which offers a fully immersive 3D experience in virtual environments. It was
developed in Unity3D engine and tested in a user experience evaluation in order to
determine its level of immersion and the possible use of that technology for the
development of future automotive HMI concepts.[3]

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Description of the Deliverables
One of the deliverables will be Interim report. It will consist of background of the topic,
literature review and the status of my current development. Another, deliverable will be
Final report. The final report will consist of literature overview and other parts which
describe and evaluate the software. Also in the final report, there will be included testing of
the software.
As this project focuses heavily on the development of the mobile application, another
deliverable will be the mobile application with augmented reality. This application will
allow user to see the 3D model on the screen of the phone, which is related to what he is
seeing on the TV screen. User will be able to manipulate with the object, for example he will
be able to rotate the object and zoom in and out. Also, user will have an option to read
about the object, which he is seeing. This application will be based on Unity engine.

In this project, I will be making Virtual reality Car Driving Simulator using Unity, Oculus rift
and steering wheel. here’s the motion of the vehicle which results in a different position
and viewing direction in the virtual world, and there’s also the motion of the head which
results in a different position and viewing direction in the virtual world. My point is that
these two motions and directions are very difficult to unravel by the brain in a VR system.

Form my experience I would say that, for driving, the HMD as used in VR is not very well
suited, because of the risk of cyber sickness that comes with the use of HMD’s and because
of the difficulty of the brain to separate the effects of vehicle movement and head
movements:

 the vehicle moves through the world, controlled by the steering wheel and pedals of
the driver.

 the driver looks around in the environment by turning the head (head tracking)

These two types of motions in combination give a high risk of cyber sickness in a VR system
and make steering very difficult. The brain is not very well able to distinguish these
movements. It would be interesting to study these phenomena in more detail and to see if
and how these problems can be solved. Maybe these effects are not so pervasive in a FPS

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game, where you ‘walk’ slowly and use other means to move forward (instead of a steering
wheel and pedals). In the mean time, I seriously doubt if VR is suitable for driver training in
a driving simulator.

Brief Description of the Problem

As this is application which displays 3D object, the device is expected to be with touch
screen and be compatible with 3D graphics. This VR Car Driving Simulator is expected to
be installed and it is expected that the user will be either a child or an adult. The
application will be age restricted. This simulator should display a 3D model and the user
should be able to interact with it. The user should be able to rotate, zoom in and out the 3D
model.[6]

System Architecture
For easy integration of new features, the design of the VR driving simulator followed a
modular- based architecture. The design consisted of integrating the vehicle model in Unity
3D, simulating realistic lighting conditions within Unity3D, integration of the 3D models
and input/out device mentioned in chapter 3 in Unity3D. Figure 1 shows the system
architecture. OR with the head tracking sensor is connected to the computer through HDMI
and USB interfaces. The HDMI is used to transmit the driving simulation graphic data to the
HMD and the USB is used to control the head tracking sensor.

Implementation
The prototype was realized in Unity3D engine. The developed prototype was iteratively
tested until the expected result was achieved. Implementation and testing were done in
parallel, feature updates or corrections were tested in Unity3D with and without OR.

The next step was the integration of the male character model, the V8 engine sound, and
the simulated driving speed displayed as a HuD feature. The HuD feature was implemented
as a standard floating GUI text that displays the actual speed during runtime. Finally, the
keyboard was configured to activate and deactivate the Logitech G25 functionality (F1),
display the male character (driver) (F2) displayed in figure 2, and to display a motorbike
driving directly opposite the test driver (F3).[7]

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Brief explanation of how the project will be evaluated
Hardware
Visualization Component: This consisted of the OR HMD, a Samsung monitor and the

MSI computer monitor. The visualization components interact with the simulation through

the Oculus SDK.

Input/output Devices: The most important devices considered for this work are the

Logitech G25, Leap Motion tracking device and solid 5.1 surround sound Roccat KAVE

Gaming earphones. The control flow between the Logitech device and the 3D car model is

realized in Unity3D with the help of Logitech plugins and assets (Logitech Gaming SDK,

2014). The Leap Motion served as a hand-and-finger-tracking device.

Software
Oculus SDK: Oculus SDK provides the library containing all the Prefabs necessary to create

and run an application in OR e.g. the OVR Player Controller and OVR Camera Rig, and the

Oculus Unity Integration Package needed to integrate a Unity3D application with OR.
Furthermore,

all the necessary plug-ins needed to create and execute an application in oculus are

contained in this library.

3D Models (3rd Party): The following 3D models were used in the development of the VR

driving simulator; 3D BMW 7 Series model, V8 engine Soundpack -.fbx file, Landscape /

Racetrack – .fbx files (Sommer, 2012), and Mixamo Carl Hi-Res / Male Character Pack

(Mixamo, 2014). These models were either gotten from the Unity Asset store or bought
directly
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from the 3D model supplier.

Unity3D: This is the development platform where the DS model and all driving scenes were

developed, executed and a standalone created. Unity3D has an asset store which offers
numerous

free and commercial inbuilt models for easy integration. Furthermore, it also offers a

convincing and near-realistic experience in the virtual world due to its excellent graphics.

Unity5 provides almost accurate vehicle physics for an absolute realistic vehicle control.

Finally, Unity3D supports force feedback devices e.g. Logitech G25. The two main functions

implemented in Unity3D are the Camera Controller and the Vehicle Controller (Driving

Script) where the vehicle dynamics are implemented.[8]

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In order to validate the level of immersion and the near-realistic driving experience
provided by the VR DS, and get user feedback on how to improve the implemented
simulator, a user test with a selection of 25 users was performed.

The selected user evaluation methods consisted of a Pre-Test (PrTQ) and Post-Test (PoTQ)
questionnaires. The PrTQ consisted of three sections namely personal data, experience
with 3D gaming and HMD, and driving experience. This was filled before the test session in
order to ascertain the user’s vulnerability to experience motion sickness. Users who had
little or no experience with 3D gaming or never worn a HMD before, were forewarned.

The first 14 out of the 20 questions of the PoTQ were based on expert evaluation from the
IGroup Presence Questionnaire (IPQ) to determine Presence in VEs (iGroup, 2008). Content
was mainly the user experience with the implemented prototype. The questionnaire was
filled by test persons after the driving experience in order to assess if the driving
experience with the DS was felt as real or not. The questions are mainly related to typical
VR systems and their comparison with the real world. [9]

Project delivery plan

Duration of developing devliverbales and milestones in

weeks
Project proposal 2

Background 20

Literature review 20

Interim report 10

Software development 12

Analysis and design 5

Testing 3

Evaluation 4

Final report 8
0 5 10 15 20 25

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List of resources required
Resources:

- Microsoft Word to create a documentation .

- Oculus Rift

- Steering Wheel

- Microsoft Visual Studio to develop an application .

- Mobile phone with Android operating system to test and present the application .

- Laptop with Windows 10 operating system to develop an application. [10]

List of relevant books and article/publications (at least 6)

[1]. Bayarri, S., Fernandez, M., & Perez, M. (1996). Virtual reality for driving simulation.
Communications of the ACM 39.5, P. 72-76.

[2]. Better Health Channel (2015). Motion Sickness. Website: http://goo.gl/BQxED8

[3]. Christodoulou, S., Despina, M., Gregoriades, A., & Pampaka, M. (2013). Design of a 3D
interactive simulator for driver behavior analysis. Summer Computer Simulation
Conference (SCSC '13). Society for Modeling & Simulation International, Vista, CA, Article
17, 8 pages.

[4]. Cremer, J., Kearney, J., & Papelis, Y. (1996). Driving simulation: challenges for VR
technology. Computer Graphics and Applications, IEEE 16.5: P.16-20.

[5]. De Winter, J.F.C, Van Leuween, P., & Happee. R. (2012). Advantages and Disadvantages
of Driving Simulators: A Discussion. In Proceedings of Measuring Behavior.

[6]. FurryBall 4.8 GPU Benchmark, (2014). The best graphics cards for raytrace in
FurryBall. Website: http://goo.gl/9NMSwAiGroup (2008). igroup presence questionnaire.
Website: http://tinyurl.com/oll6d7z.

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[7]. Karl, Ines, et al. (2013). Driving behavior and simulator sickness while driving the
vehicle in the loop: Validation of longitudinal driving behavior. IEEE intelligent
transportation systems magazine 5.1:

[8]. P. 42-57. Kemeny, A. (2014). From Driving Simulation to Virtual Reality. Center for
Virtual Reality and Immersive Simulation. Paris: Renault.

[9]. Li, H., Gupta, A., Zhang, J. and Flor, N. (2018). Who will use Virtual Reality? An Integrated
Approach Based on Text Analytics and Field Survey. European Journal of Operational
Research, pp 3-

[10]. BBC Taster. (2018). Civilisations AR. [online] Available at:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/taster/pilots/civilisations-ar [Accessed 4 Nov. 2018].

Silva, R., Oliveira J. C. and Giraldi G. A. (2003) 'Introduction to Virtual Reality', pp. 1-2.

[11]. Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech. (2008). Scenario 5: The Evolution of
Virtual Reality and Virtual Reality. [online] Available at:
http://www.pewinternet.org/2008/12/14/scenario-5-the-evolution-of-Virtual-reality-
and-virtual-reality/ [Accessed 1 Nov. 2018].

[12]. Fitzsimmons, M. (2018). Apple's Tim Cook: 'AR has the ability to amplify human
performance'. [online] TechRadar. Available at: https://www.techradar.com/news/apples-
tim-cook-ar-has-the-ability-to-amplify-human-performance [Accessed 4 Nov. 2018].

[14]. The Independent. (2018). Apple thinks it's about to change your world with its new
iPhone feature, and it could be right. [online] Available at:
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/apple-iphone-tim-
cook-interview-features-new-Virtual-reality-ar-arkit-a7993566.html [Accessed 4 Nov.
2018].

[15]. Lewis, J. and Neider, M. (2016). Through the Google Glass: The impact of heads-up
displays on visual attention. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 1(1).

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