The Brazilian Symposium on Virtual and Augmented Reality (SVR) celebrated its 10th edition in 2008, in the city of João Pessoa. During these last 10 years, SVR has earned its space and magnitude as a truly consolidated event within the Brazilian research community. The papers in this special issue of RITA were selectively chosen among the 24 full papers presented in SVR 2008. They are extended and revised versions of those originally presented in the symposium.
The material in this special issue is representative of the wide scope of the areas covered by the symposium. The first paper, the only one not presented at the symposium, was written by the editors jointly with Luciano Soares and Veronica Teichrieb. It provides a rich panorama of current Brazilian research in Virtual Reality (VR) and related areas, based on an analysis of the 124 full papers presented over the last four SVR editions. The second paper, by Silvano Malfatti, Selan dos Santos, Luciane Fraga, Claudia Justel, Paulo Rosa, and Jauvane Oliveira, describes some interesting VR work. Its authors present an engine (EnCIMA) aimed at the quick development of VR applications. The third paper, by Fábio Miranda, Romero Tori, Cláudio Bueno, and Lucas Trias, presents research results from the Augmented Reality (AR) area. This paper, which received the best paper award in the symposium, presents a projection-based AR X-Ray tool to allow visual exploration of internal details of walls, as an illustration. The fourth paper, by Leandro Fernandes, Vitor Pamplona, João Prauchner, Luciana Nedel, and Manuel Oliveira, explores 3D user interaction. It presents the implementation of a data glove that uses a camera to track visual markers at finger tips. Finally, the last paper, by Ednaldo Pizzolato, Diego Duarte, and Marcio Fernandes, explores speech recognition as a form of interaction, introducing a software framework for application developers.
Alberto Raposo
Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro - PUC-Rio - Brazil
Judith Kelner
Federal University of Pernambuco – UFPE – Recife- Pernambuco – Brazil
High-speed optical 3D sensing and its applications
