Virtual reality (VR) can be defined as interactive computer graphics that provides viewer-centered perspective, large field of view and stereo. Head-mounted displays (HMDs) and BOOMs™ achieve these features with small display screens which move with the viewer, close to the viewer's eyes. Projection-based displays [3, 7], supply these characteristics by placing large, fixed screens more distant from the viewer. The Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) of the University of Illinois at Chicago has specialized in projection-based VR systems. EVL's projection-based VR display, the CAVE™ [2], premiered at the SIGGRAPH 92 conference.In this article we present two new, CAVE-derived, projection-based VR displays developed at EVL: the ImmersaDesk™ and the Infinity Wall™, a VR version of the PowerWall [9]. We describe the different requirements which led to their design, and compare these systems to other VR devices.
The CAVE, a walk-in virtual reality environment typically consisting of 4–6 3 m-by-3 m sides of a room made of rear-projected screens, was first conceived and built in 1991. In the nearly two decades since its conception, the supporting technology has improved so that current CAVEs are much brighter, at much higher resolution, and have dramatically improved graphics performance. However, rear-projection-based CAVEs typically must be housed in a 10 m-by-10 m-by-10 m room (allowing space behind the screen walls for the projectors), which limits their deployment to large spaces. The CAVE of the future will be made of tessellated panel displays, eliminating the projection distance, but the implementation of such displays is challenging. Early multi-tile, panel-based, virtual-reality displays have been designed, prototyped, and built for the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia by researchers at the University of California, San Diego, and the University of Illinois at Chicago. New means of image generation and control are considered key contributions to the future viability of the CAVE as a virtual-reality device.
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