Odd alignment error

[GSC]

We are dealing with a very strange projection issue that is turning out to be very difficult to figure out, let alone fix.

Please see these images for an immediate impression of the situation.

Everything seems to be done correctly, setup-wise, but nevertheless, the green area always remains. Despite numerous hardware verifications and multiple recalibrations, the issue of misaliged projection persists.

So far, none of our contacts within the community has been able to tell us what is going on here, nor what else could be tried in order to resolve this.

Does anyone here have any idea what could be causing this misalignment, and what possible solutions might be?

[Oliver Kreylos]

From the raw Kinect feed, it looks like there is a big area of depth data missing, and that area seems to line up with the green area in the AR Sandbox image. I don’t think this is a projection problem, but a camera problem.

Which version of the Kinect camera are you using? Check that the camera’s lens and its pattern projector / IR emitter are unobstructed.

[GSC]

Thanks for the input. It seems like that, indeed.

It is the original X360 Kinect camera.

The proper installation of the camera (i.e. camera lens & IR being unobstructed) has been checked numerous times now, quite elaborately so, even, yet still the issue persists.

Changing the main height value in the BoxLayout also does not improve things, and even makes the application freeze or crash.

Other than in the affected (green) area, the system does function properly, i.e. it projects well and updates the projection based on physical changes made in the sand below.
Nevertheless, this is quite an unsustainable situation, not only because the system now fails to represent the AR Sandbox (software) in its full glory, but especially because it is currently right in the middle of being rolled out into production in an educational environment.

Could it be anything in the application, itself? And is there any other way we could troubleshoot & doublecheck any issues that might somehow be lingering on the hardware-side, after all?

[Oliver Kreylos]

This is happening inside the camera, or along the optical path from the sand to the camera lens, so nothing you can do via BoxLayout.txt or inside the AR Sandbox software is going to affect it. RawKinectViewer shows the raw depth video feed from the camera, and there is an area of missing data that corresponds to the missing data you see inside the AR Sandbox. I’m guessing that your camera is broken somehow. I would temporarily replace it with another one and see if that fixes it.

[Author]

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