Feeling your way around a CAVE-like reconfigurable VR system

Virtual reality (VR) systems can generate environments that do not exist or are difficult to access. State-of-the-art VR is rapidly evolving and has resulted in enhanced user experience, which leads to a completely immersive experience. Advances in high-resolution displays and highly powerful computer graphics hardware drive the most substantial advancement in VR, which is the introduction of low-cost consumer-grade head-mounted displays (HMD). Despite being inexpensive and providing a high-quality VR experience, commonly used HMDs have a limited field of view, and giving multiple people access to the same virtual environment is inherently challenging. CAVE™ Automated Virtual Environments (CAVE) have benefitted from the same advances in computer graphics hardware and from improvements to binocular (stereo) projection technology, which has reduced the cost and complexity of such systems and increased the visual display quality (resolution, colour, frame rate, etc.). Unlike in HMDs, in a CAVE tracking system, interaction technologies and audio are distinct sub-systems that need to be designed to achieve the desired purpose. A designer needs to consider applications to be used in CAVE and optimise performance. In this paper, we present the design specifications of a reconfigurable CAVE-like VR system that incorporates 6-degree-of-freedom haptic interaction and 3D ambisonic audio. The system was designed for the Centre for Advanced Design in Engineering Training, VR Lab, at Deakin University. Future directions and different use cases along with a comparison matrix are presented to highlight the advantages of the presented system over other existing VR technologies.