EXXAR Cave Fully Immersive Virtual Reality

CAVE stands for CAVE Automatic Virtual Environment and takes the form of a cube-like space or small room where at least three walls act as giant monitor in which images are displayed by a series of projectors.

CAVE Automatic Virtual Environment

VR is distinctly different from other multimedia because it is more interactive and can often be controlled by the user. Virtual reality is a broad category of technology, but the VR of interest in this research is a type of immersive virtual reality (IVR). Unlike VR, IVR environments create a “psychological state in which the individual perceives himself or herself as existing within, being immersed in, or having presence in it”. CAVE stands for CAVE Automatic Virtual Environment and takes the form of a cube-like space or small room where at least three walls (and sometimes floor & ceiling) act as giant monitor in which images are displayed by a series of projectors.

EXXAR Stream

Immersive virtual reality (VR)

Immersive virtual reality (VR) systems can provide users with a sense of feeling present in the displayed virtual environment (VE) similar to perceiving an environment in the real world. Recent advances in hardware technologies make it possible to build immersive projection environments (IPE), such as CAVEs, with a large room-sized interactive workspace. Such IPEs support natural embodied forms of interaction with the displayed virtual world in the ego-centric frame of reference of the observer, including real walking. These affordances facilitate spatial impressions of the VE that are important for exploration and review in a wide range of application domains such as architecture and engineering in which users benefit from experiencing the VE at real scale.

CAVE simulations

VR experiences are varied and can be passive allowing users to watch as simulations pass by or they can be dynamic letting users interact with representations of real objects by manipulating and rotating them to different orientations with a handheld device. IVR setups usually provide the user with a wide field of view (150 degrees or more) in a virtual environment made of high resolution images projected in stereoscopy, or as two distinct images that overlap into one 3D image when the user wears a special headset. Additionally, the user is often motion-tracked to allow the environment to respond to his or her movements. A shorter delay period between user movement and virtual feedback adds to the feeling of physical presence in the environment as the environment seems to respond to user movements in real-time despite the fact that it is artificial. CAVEs vary in dimensions, but a typical CAVE is a four-walled room with three walls and a floor. Each surface is illuminated by computer generated objects and scenarios observed as two slightly offset images. Special glasses cause the images to overlap giving the effect of three dimensionalities and simulating the natural way human eyes see objects stereoscopically thus fooling the senses into thinking they are actually inside of a real, physical environment.