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Image Courtesy of:http://www.evl.uic.edu/pape/CAVE/
Developed by the University of Illinois, the
CAVE premiered at the ACM SIGGRAPH 92 conference,
and has achieved national recognition as a compelling
display environment and earned the reputation
as the “second way” to virtual reality
in response to MIT’s head-mounted devices.
It allows the user to be completely immersed in
the application with 3 surrounding walls and a
floor. The CAVE has historically been one of the
finest VR devices to display VR. UIC has been
developing lower end systems that will enable
companies and universities to build VR devices
without the one million dollar commitment the
CAVE requires. These visualization devices in
order of importance are the following:
CAVE
C-Wall
Passive
Stereo Wall
ImmersaDesk
There are four different projection devices at
UIC. In the Art and Design building, the Passive
Stereo Wall, C-Wall,
and the ImmersaDesk
exist in an area called the Passion Pit. The Passive
Stereo wall is 5' x 6' and requires lightweight
passive glasses. The C-Wall is also passive stereo
measuring 10-' x 12'. The ImmersaDesk, like the
CAVE, is Active Stereo and requires cumbersome
head mounted gear. There is currently only one
CAVE
at UIC, located on the first floor of the ESL
building. The Passive Stereo wall is an excellent
presentation device because viewers are not required
to wear heavy glasses and it is more accessible
than the CAVE.
More About The Cave
The CAVE is both a recursive
acronym (Cave Automatic Virtual Environment) and
a reference to "The Simile of the Cave"
found in Plato's Republic, in which the philosopher
explores the ideas of perception, reality, and
illusion. Plato used the analogy of a person facing
the back of a cave alive with shadows that are
his/her only basis for ideas of what real objects
are.
Physically, the CAVE is a metal frame outlining
the edges of a 10x10x10 cube. Polymer plastic-like
screens are stretched over the three vertical
faces of the frame. You stand in the middle of
this thing and wear shutter glasses. Outside of
the cube there are four projectors pointing at
the three polymer covered faces and one projector
pointing down at the floor.
The refresh rate of the projectors is synched
up with the flicker rate of the shutter glasses
so that every other projected frame alternates
between a left eye and right eye image. The shutter
glasses block out the image not meant for the
blocked out eye effectively supplying each eye
with its own personalized customized 3d image.
You should take advantage of
the opportunity to program for the CAVE. Although
CAVEs are not widespread throughout the world
because they cost close to one million dollars
to build, the same scene graph can be used to
run your application on a passive stereo system
which can be built for under ten thousand dollars.
There are many VR projection
devices, more can be read about them at the Fake
Space Systems web
site.
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