Immersive Virtual Reality

Definition

The goal of Immersive Virtual Reality is to completely immerse the user inside the computer generated world, giving the impression to the user that he/she has “stepped inside” the synthetic world.

Virtual Reality (VR) is the technology that provides almost real and/or believable experience in a synthetic or virtual way. The goal of Immersive VR is to completely immerse the user inside the computer generated world, giving the impression to the user that he/she has “stepped inside” the synthetic world. This can be achieved by using either the technologies of Head-Mounted Display (HMD) or multiple projections. Immersive VR with HMD uses HMD to project VR just in front of the eyes and allows users to focus on display without distraction. A magnetic sensor inside the HMD detects the users' head motion and feeds that information to the attached processor. Consequently, the user turns his or her head; the displayed graphics can reflect the changing viewpoint. The virtual world appears to respond to head movement in a familiar way.

Immersive VR with multiple projections uses multiple projectors to create VR on a huge screen, which might be a hemispherical surface, in a room where users might ware polarized glasses to maximize the feeling of being present at the scene in standstill. The form of this immersive graphical display is known as the CAVE (stands for Computer-Aided Virtual Environment), where the immersion occurs by surrounding the body on all sides by images, rather than just the eyes. Early versions of these technologies were demonstrated at SIGGRAPH' 92 in Chicago by Sun Microsystems and University of Illinois. The CAVE is essentially a five sided cube. The participant stands in the middle of cube, and images are projected onto the walls in front, above, below and on either side of the participant, utilizing full 270° peripheral vision. As the user travels through the virtual environment, updated images are projected onto the CAVE's walls to give the sensation of smooth motion. Figure 1 shows a CAVE at the University of Ottawa's DISCOVER Lab [1].

Immersive Virtual Reality. Figure 1.

Immersive virtual reality in a CAVE.

Cross-References

Virtual and Augmented Reality