| Approach: A CAVE (Cave Automatic Virtual Environment) is an immersive virtual reality environment where projectors are directed towards four, five or six walls of a cube which is the size of a room. The user can move and navigate within this environment with movement sensors and special glasses which allow him to perceive objects in three dimensions and move around these objects. The development of the software of such a system includes the following components: data of virtual scenes and scenarios, graphic representation in stereo with a perspective correction for the CAVE walls, acquisition of the movement and interactions of the user, configuration tools and system start-up.
Traditional virtual reality systems use costly software and computation platforms, since this system is very complex to create and their application is limited. However, with the increasing popularity of video games, graphic engines which are more powerful than the virtual reality systems have been combined with low-cost working platforms to provide very affordable systems for the consumer. Thus, four licences for a video game and four high performance PCs can provide an impressive simulation at a fraction of the cost of traditional systems.
In this research project we present a virtual reality system based on the adaptation of the video game Unreal Tournament 2004 for a CAVE infrastructure. Our objective is to develop a software system which is pwoerful, flexible and affordable using low-cost platforms and allowing an interface with the CAVE infrastructure and other virtual reality components. |
