I just got a piece of unsolicited email from Microsoft, daring me to test Bing against Google. Since when did Microsoft start spamming? Do they think that sending HTMLy mass emails full of remote content is going to garner them lots of sympathy? What the hell is wrong with you people?
This is what it looked like:
Spam email from Microsoft daring me to take the Bing challenge. As if. Sure, sending mass emails full of remote content is going to make you real popular.
I feel kinda dirty for clicking on “show remote content” just so that I could take this screenshot.
So you just built yourself a CAVE. Or maybe you already have one, but you just finished implementing an awesome CAVE application. Either way, you want to tell the world about your achievement. You can invite people to come over and experience it, and while that’s the best way of going about it, you can only reach a handful of people.
So what do you do? Well, you make a movie of course. A movie can be seen by millions of people, and they can all see how awesome CAVEs are. Just one tiny little problem: how do you actually go about filming that movie?
The most obvious approach is to take a video camera, fire up the CAVE, put someone in there, point, and shoot. Since the CAVE’s walls are projection screens, the camera will record what’s on the walls, and that should be good enough, right? Well, I don’t think so. There are plenty of such videos out there, and I picked one more or less at random (no offense to whoever made this):
Now, I honestly don’t think this is convincing at all. If you haven’t already experienced a CAVE first hand, can you actually tell what’s going on? The images on the screens are blurry due to the stereoscopic display, severely distorted due to head-tracked rendering, and move and wobble around as the user moves in the CAVE. It is impossible to tell what the 3D model displayed in this CAVE really looks like, and I believe it is impossible to understand — for a lay audience — what the person in the CAVE is actually experiencing. The user being all “woo” and “aah” and “awesome” doesn’t really help either — looking at this with a cynical eye, you’d rightfully feel someone is trying to pull wool over your eyes. If I didn’t already know better, and saw this video, I wouldn’t be keen on seeing a CAVE in person. It looks rather lame and headache-inducing, to be honest.
So what’s the mistake? A CAVE works because the images on the screens are generated specifically for the person viewing them, which is why positional head tracking is a required ingredient for any CAVE (and why CAVEs are in principle single-user environments). But in this case, the person in the CAVE is not the intended audience: the people watching the movie are the audience. The solution is very simple: instead of head-tracking the user in the CAVE, you have to head-track the camera. And turn off stereoscopy while you’re at it, because the video camera is only monoscopic after all.
Here is one of my old movies, showing what that looks like:
This is a bit better. The movie is not particularly good quality (it’s old; I need to record a few new ones), but at least viewers can see what’s going on. The difference between this and the previous movie is that here the images are correctly projected onto the CAVE walls. Looking closely, you will see the seams where the walls meet, but you will also see that the 3D images cross those seams without being broken up or distorted. If you squint enough no longer to see the seams, it will seem as if the CAVE is one big flat screen. As a result, virtual 3D objects show up at their proper size and in proper relation to the real user in the CAVE. If the user touches a part of the data using the hand-held input device, this will show up properly in the video. In the latter parts, where a yellow “selection sphere” is attached to the input device, the sphere’s image in the video shows up in exactly the right place and size.
There are still two things wrong with this video: for one, it appears as if the user is having trouble working with the CAVE. We’ll address that later. The second issue is that the CAVE doesn’t look particularly dynamic. This is because the camera is on a tripod and doesn’t move throughout the movie (the movie only cuts between two different camera setups). One very strong depth cue that particularly applies to 2D video is motion parallax, where 3D objects move in a very particular way as the camera filming them is moved, and our brains are particularly good at picking up on that. Because the camera here doesn’t move, there is no motion parallax, and the CAVE looks somewhat “flat.”
This next movie addresses that issue by using a hand-held camera, which is still tracked by the CAVE as in the previous movie:
This looks a lot better. In fact, it looks so convincing that I have gotten many questions asking how I made the video to be 3D. Answer is, of course, that it’s not a 3D movie; it’s a regular 2D movie exploiting motion parallax. The trick is that I’m moving the camera as much as I can, to show how the virtual 3D objects appear to move in the exact same particular way as the real objects (in this case the user). Real filmmakers would tell me to cool it, but in this case egregious camera movement is a necessary evil. While I’m panning the camera, the virtual and real objects move in exactly the same way; in other words, the virtual objects appear real, which is exactly how and why a CAVE works.
But even this does not address the remaining issue: the 3D interactions captured in these movies seem awkward, as if the users didn’t know what they were doing, or, worse, as if a CAVE or VR in general were very hard to use, and not particularly effective. I call this the catch-22 of filming VR. Above I mentioned that in a CAVE, the images on the walls are generated specifically for one viewer, in order to appear real. But in these movies, the images are generated for the camera — and not even in stereo, to boot.
This means the actual user in the movies does not see the virtual objects properly, and is essentially flying blind. That’s the reason why the interactions here look awkward. Instead of simply being able to touch a virtual object as if it were real and then interact with it, the poor user has to judge his or her actions against the feedback of the generated images (which, from his or her perspective, don’t look like real objects at all), and adjust accordingly. This is why it was so hard to properly measure a distance on the globe in the second video, it was basically pointing trial-and-error.
So the choice seems to be: let the user in the CAVE be the “main” viewer, allowing them to interact properly and fluently, but create a movie that looks utterly unconvincing, or let the camera be the “main” viewer, capturing beautiful video, but giving the impression that CAVEs are hard to use. If you want to communicate that CAVEs are awesome to look at and easy to use, that’s a lose-lose situation.
Or at least that’s what I thought, until a member of the KeckCAVES group applied some lateral thinking and suggested to “split” the CAVE: on half of the screens, show the images from the user’s point of view; on the other half, show them from the camera’s point of view. Then, if the user only looks at the first half, and the camera only looks at the second half, you can capture good-looking video with fluent interactions. The only thing left for me to do was say “D’oh” and do it right away. Here’s one of the early videos showing this new approach:
This is more like it. For this particular setup, I only set up the right CAVE wall to render for the camera, and left the other three screens (back and left wall and floor) for myself. I put the camera on a tripod and aimed it straight at the right wall, and stood at the very edge of the CAVE to give the camera the best possible view. You’ll notice how I misaimed a bit: at the left edge of the video, the camera is capturing some of the user-centered stereo projection on the back wall, and it looks weird. But it’s not bad enough to warrant a complete re-shoot.
Now, unfortunately this means we’re back to static non-moving cameras. In this particular case, I shot the whole movie by myself, meaning I couldn’t have done hand-held anyway, but I’m not quite sure how to do hand-held in this setup. While moving the camera around, it will naturally capture more than one screen unless one is very careful, and if the camera sees one of the for-user screens, the illusion will break down. In short, I’m not sure. I guess the best compromise for now is to film two versions of the same movie and intercut them (like I did for the LiDAR Viewer movie): one with a hand-held camera to show how a CAVE looks, and one with a split CAVE and fixed camera to show how interactions work. With some clever editing, that could create stellar results — but I haven’t tried it yet, primarily for lack of time. Capturing good CAVE video is not quick.
I know I’m several years late to the party talking about the recent 3D movie renaissance, but bear with me. I want to talk not about 3D movies, but about their influence on the VR field, good and bad.
First, the good. It’s impossible to deny the huge impact 3D movies have had on VR, simply by commodifying 3D display hardware. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that without Avatar, you wouldn’t be able to go into an electronics store and pick up a 70″ 3D TV for $2100. And without that crucial component, we would not be able to build low-cost fully-immersive 3D display systems for $7000. And we wouldn’t have neat toys like Sony’s HMZ-T1 or the upcoming Oculus Rift either — although the latter is designed for gaming from the ground up, I don’t think the Kickstarter would have taken off if 3D movies weren’t a thing right now.
And the effect goes beyond simply making real VR cheaper. It is that now real VR is affordable for a much larger segment of people. $7000 is still a bit much to spend for home entertainment, but it’s inside the equipment budget for many scientists. And those are my target audience. We are not selling low-cost VR systems per se, but we’re giving away the designs to build them, and the software to run them. And we’ve “sold” dozens of them, primarily to scientists who work with 3D data that is too complex to meaningfully analyze with desktop 3D visualization, but who don’t have the budget to build “professional” systems. Now, dozens is absolutely zilch in mainstream terms, but for our niche it’s a big deal, and it’s just taking off. We’re even getting them into high schools now. And we’re not the only ones “selling” them.
The end result is that many more people are getting exposed to real immersive 3D display environments, and to the practical benefits that they offer for their daily work. That will benefit us all.
But there are some downsides to the 3D movie renaissance as well, and while those can be addressed, we first need to be aware of them. For one, while 3D movies are definitely in the public conscience, I found that nobody is exactly completely bonkers about them. Roger Ebert is an extreme example (I think that Mr. Ebert is wrong in the sense that he claims 3D does not work in principle, whereas I think 3D does not work in many concrete implementations seen in theaters right now, but that’s a topic for another post), but the majority of people I speak to are decidedly “meh” about 3D movies. They say “3D doesn’t work for me” or “I get headaches” or “I get dizzy” etc.
Now that is a problem for VR as a whole, because there is no distinction in the public mind between 3D movies and real immersive 3D graphics. Meaning that people think that VR doesn’t work. But it does. I just did a quick guesstimate, and in the seven years we’ve had our CAVE, I’ve probably brought 1000 people through there, from every segment of the population. It has worked for every single one of them. How do I know? Everyone who enters the CAVE goes through the training course — a beach ball-sized globe hanging in the middle of the CAVE, shown in this video:
(Oh boy, just looking at this six-year-old video, the user interface in Vrui has improved so much. It’s almost embarrassing.)
I ask every single person to step in, touch the globe, and then indicate how big it is. And they all do the same thing: use both hands to make a cradling gesture around a virtual object that’s not actually there. If the 3D effect wouldn’t work for them, they couldn’t do it. QED. Before you ask: I’m aware that a significant percentage of the general population have no stereo vision at all, but immersive 3D graphics works for them as well because it provides motion parallax. I know because one of my best friends has monocular vision, and it works for him. He even co-stars with me in a silly video.
The upshot is that the conversation goes differently now. It used to be that I talk to “VR virgins” about what I do, and they have no pre-conception of 3D, are curious, try the CAVE, and it works for them and they like it. These days, I talk about the CAVE, they immediately say that 3D doesn’t work for them, and they’re very reluctant to try the CAVE. I twist their arms to get them in there nonetheless, and it works for them, and they like it. This is not a problem if I have someone there in person, but it’s a problem when I can’t just stuff the person I’m describing VR to into a VR system, as in, say, when you’re writing a proposal to beg for money. And that’s bad news, big time (but it’s a topic for another post).
There is another interesting change in behavior: let’s say I have a group of people coming in for a tour (yeah, we sometimes get strongarmed into doing those). Used to be, they would come into the CAVE room, and stand around not sure what to expect or what to do. These days, they immediately sit down at the conference table, grab a pair of 3D glasses if they find one, and get ready to be entertained. I then have to tell them that no, that’s not how it works, would they please put the non-head tracked glasses down until later, get up, and get ready to get into the CAVE itself and see it properly? It’s pretty funny, actually.
The other downside is that the use of the word “3D” for movies has watered down that term even more. Now there are:
“3D graphics” for projected 2D images of 3D scenes, i.e., virtual and real photos or movies, i.e., basically everything anybody has ever done. The end results of 3D graphics are decidedly 2D, but the term was coined to distinguish it from 2D graphics, i.e., pictures of scenes playing in flatland.
“3D movies” meaning stereoscopic movies shown on stereoscopic displays. In my opinion, a better term would be “2D plus depth” movies (or they could just go with “stereo movies,” you know), because most directors at this time treat the stereoscopic dimension as a separate entity from the other two dimensions, as something that can be tweaked and played with. And I think that’s one cause of the problem, because they’re messing with people’s brains. And don’t even get me started on “upconverted” 3D movies, oh my.
“3D displays” meaning stereoscopic displays, those used to show 3D movies. They are a necessary component to create 3D images, but not 3D by themselves.
“3D displays” meaning immersive 3D displays like CAVEs. The distinguishing feature of these is that they show three-dimensional scenes and objects in a way similar enough to how we would perceive the same scenes and objects if they were real that our brains accept the illusion, and allow us to work with them as if they were real — and this last bit is really the main point. The difference between this and “3D movies” cannot be overstated. I would rather call these displays “holographic,” but then I get flak from the “holograms are only holograms if they’re based on lasers and interference” crowd, who are technically correct (and isn’t that the best form of correctness?) because that’s how the word was defined, but it’s wrong because these displays look and feel exactly like holograms — they are free-standing, solid-appearing, touchable virtual objects. After all, “hologram,” loosely translated from Greek, means “shows the whole thing.” And that’s exactly what immersive 3D displays do.
And I probably missed a few. So there’s clearly a confusion of terms, and we need to find ways to distinguish what real immersive 3D graphics does from what 3D movies do, and need to do it in ways that don’t create unrealistic expectations, either. Don’t reference “the Matrix,” try not to mention holodecks (but it’s so tempting!), don’t say it’s an indistinguishable replication of reality (in other words, don’t say “virtual reality,” ha!). Ideally, don’t say anything — show them.
In summary, “3D” is now widely embedded in the public conscience, and the VR community has to deal with it. There are obvious and huge benefits, but there are some downsides as well, and those have to be addressed. They can be addressed — fortunately, immersive 3D graphics are not the same as 3D movies — but it takes care and effort. Time to get started.
When I got talked into starting a blog, I decided I’d at least have some fun with it and install the blog software myself — after all, I’m already running a web server; why not use that? Should be easy, right?
Well, turns out it was easy, except one “little snag.” I could see the blog template, change settings, post and comment — but I couldn’t upload media. Some digging turned up that WordPress stuffs everything besides media into its underlying MySQL database, but media files are directly uploaded to the directory structure managed by the web server running the WordPress software. Whenever I tried uploading media, I got the dreaded “Unable to create directory – Is its parent directory writable by the server?” error message.
Now, being an old Linux hand, I blamed permission issues right away, and started doing the usual tests — find out under which user account apache and php scripts are run, chown the offending directory tree to that user, set proper permissions on that directory tree, all to no avail. I even tried the last-resort fix of making the entire wordpress directory world-writable (don’t try this at home), but even that didn’t work. And that had me stumped.
So I turned to Google, and found out that about 10 million other people had already run into the same problem. There were lots of proposed fixes, most of them bogus of course (use ftp to upload media; manually create a new uploads/<year>/<month> directory every month; make everything world-writable; disable your plug-ins; re-install WordPress; change hosting services; exorcise your server; do a rain dance, etc.). Not a single one of them worked, including the rain dance.
Now here was the actual issue: my web server is sitting on a modern Linux kernel, and if you know your stuff you know where I’m going with this: it’s running SELinux. And of course SELinux was the culprit. It turns out that apache runs under a very restrictive SELinux regime (as it should), and this regime makes all files underneath the root html directory read-only, no matter what the UNIX file permissions say. You can chmod 0777 to your heart’s content, it will make not an ounce of difference. But once you re-label WordPress’ upload directory to httpd_sys_rw_content_t, everything is peachy keen.
So why is this so hard? SELinux is not to blame; it’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to be doing. It’s running apache in the most restrictive way possible that allows it to run at all. Changing the label of a directory is a one-line command, and there’s even a man page (httpd_selinux) that explains what needs to be done. So why on earth did not a single one of the answers I found mention SELinux at all? (Of course, in hindsight, if you Google for “WordPress SELinux media upload” you get lots of good advice, but if you are already suspecting SELinux is involved, you don’t need to Google anymore).
I think the basic problem is that the fact that SELinux has completely changed the way UNIX does security has stayed under the radar for most people. UNIX file permissions are no longer the first line of defense against unauthorized file accesses. I myself completely forgot about SELinux while frantically trying to solve the problem; I only remembered it when I had already wasted a good part of a day. What I’m saying is, SELinux needs a really good PR campaign. Oh, and somebody needs to write a blog post containing the keywords “WordPress cannot upload images” and “SELinux” and “httpd_sys_rw_content_t” so that poor noobs like me will be able to find it on Google in the future. Oh, I guess I just did.
So here’s my solution, where /var/www/html/wordpress is my wordpress root directory, and apache is running as user apache:
Chown the entire /var/www/html hierarchy to root:apache and make it readable for user and group only:
chown -R root:apache /var/www/html
chmod -R g-w,o-rwx /var/www/html
Create (if it doesn’t already exist) and chown /var/www/html/wordpress/wp-content/uploads to apache:apache and make sure it’s user-writable (it should already be):
Optionally, make the change permanent, i.e., make it survive a complete file system re-label:
semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t “/var/www/html/wordpress/wp-content/uploads(/.*)?”
Oh, and if you think my advice to make all of /var/www/html verboten for other is too restrictive, at least do the world a favor and make the WordPress configuration file, you know the one that contains your MySQL database’s admin password in plain text, yeah go ahead and make that one user- and group-only.
Ah hell, while you’re at it, just save yourself a lot of trouble and go ahead and read this.
