I was recently to see the University of Wyoming’s new CAVE system installation (you can read more about it here ). The expereince was absolutely breathtaking. I often find myself ststrugglingto explain the feeling of using the CAVE system to navigate a rendered town. It’s use of optical tracking is stunning as you are able to see all the walls around you shift to the perspective of your glasses’ current coordinates. Peaking around corners in a pre-rendered environment felt so real that I found myself avoiding them for fear of bumping into them.

After a bit of work, my co-researchers were able to put our old model of the three dimensional dungeon with a bridge into the CAVE system. It was such a delight to truly feel surrounded by he walls I had previously created in Blender3D and just barely being able to see through the cave’s windows. The experience was quite enjoyable but I was left with a lot of questions as to how to improve the system.

The CAVE uses two dimensional menus for adjusting options which feels unnatural and forced in the otherwise amazing system. It also is difficult typing within the system as you must be standing up when using it. I believe a new method of interacting with the system and a more natural graphical user interface for toggling options and using menus is needed to complete the CAVE, something that I would like to explore tinkering with in the future.

My professor and head of the lab also ordered huge flat-screen three dimensional televisions to create a smaller and easily transportable CAVE system which is a great idea. The CAVE system is quite large and requires a lot of room and maintenance (calibration, projector issues, etc.) where as three televisions at a fixed angle would almost give the user a 180 degree field of vision!