Virtual Environments and Computer Graphics Group

About us

The Virtual Environments and Computer Graphics (VECG) group is part of UCL Computer Science. The group explores how to enrich human experience of digital content, combining scientific theory, engineering practice and an understanding of human perception. The VECG’s work spans the capture, modelling, and display of multisensory environments, covering hardware, algorithms, and human-centred systems. 

The group brings together experts in virtual reality, computer graphics, imaging and interactive technologies, contributing to advances in both academic research and practical application.

Our research

Much of our work centres on creating rich, expressive environments for users to experience. These environments may be derived from scans of real scenes or entirely imagined spaces constructed from examples. We are therefore particularly interested in methods for modelling only those aspects of a scene that are perceptually meaningful to humans. This includes real-time capture and display processes for augmented reality in dynamic settings, as well as offline capture of complex scenes to analyse, simplify, and distil them into models suitable for scene creation.

The VECG group has a reputation for taking fundamental insights into algorithms and systems and turning them into prototypes that are evaluated by users. 

Below, you can find links to the different teams. Each of our teams has a different strategy for impact through open source code, access to prototypes and interdisciplinary work in application domains.

• Virtual reality
  Immersive interfaces, exploring presence, avatars, 3D interaction and haptic feedback
• Smart geometry processing
  Smart geometry, including acquisition, processing and geometric deep learning
• Digital reality
  Computational photography, appearance modelling and fabrication, point-based graphics and cultural-heritage applications
• Graphics and illumination
  (Deep) learning for graphics, interactive global illumination and perceptual graphics
• Sensors and systems
  Situation awareness, tracking, mapping, estimation, graphical models, machine learning, robot path planning, and applications of augmented reality
• Audio perception
  Auditory scene analysis, audio perception and virtual reality audio

The group translates foundational research into practical outcomes such as prototypes, open-source tools and user-tested systems. It also leads the postgraduate Computer Graphics, Vision and Imaging MSc, training students in imaging, vision, graphics and immersive technologies.

Get Involved

VECG collaborates with academic, industrial and interdisciplinary partners to advance research and innovation in immersive technology and computer graphics. It provides opportunities for doctoral study, collaborative projects, open research and system evaluation with real users. 

We are always interested in talking to prospective PhD students. Any open PhD or researcher positions are widely advertised on relevant social media and also on jobs.ac.uk.

People

Academic staff