Physics Based CAVE Virtual Reality
Abstract
The term Virtual Reality (VR) is used by many different people with many
meanings. For the purposes of this paper, we restrict VR to computer mediated systems.
Virtual Reality is a way for humans to visualize, manipulate and interact with computers
and extremely complex data. The visualization part refers to the computer generating
visual, auditory or other sensual outputs to the user of a world within the computer. This
world may be a CAD model, a scientific simulation, or a view into a database. The user
can interact with the world and directly manipulate objects within the world. Some
worlds are animated by other processes, perhaps physical simulations, or simple
animation scripts. Interaction with the virtual world, at least with near real-time control
of the viewpoint, is one of the most important aspects for virtual reality.
A Virtual Reality Cave Automatic Virtual Environnlent (CAVE) is an immersive,
three-dimensional visualization environment that allows scientists and engineers to
interact directly with computer generated images. The visualization environment can be
used to efficiently analyze and modify numerical computer simulations, interactively
design prototypes for industrial applications, and remotely control robots for
telepresence.
An often overlooked problem in virtual environments is the physical laws that
define the world. Although work has shown that physically based modeling techniques
greatly enhance an immersion experience, an easy to use library has not been developed.
The interactions of different forces and how these forces affect everything within the user
created world should not be ignored as is the case in many current applications. When
physics is included in virtual reality applications, the code is usually developed by the
programmer from scratch, taking much time and resources. The work here describes a
first step toward a possible solution to such problems. This work allows users to easily
implement physical laws within a digitally created environment.