Virtual Reality Tool for Exploration of Three-Dimensional Cellular Automata

Abstract

We present a Virtual Reality (VR) tool for exploration of three-dimensional cellular automata. In addition to the traditional visual representation offered by other implementations, this tool allows users to aurally render the active (alive) cells of an automaton in sequence along one axis or simultaneously create melodic and harmonic textures, while preserving in all cases the relative locations of these cells to the user. The audio spatialization method created for this research can render the maximum number of audio sources specified by the underlying software (255) without audio dropouts. The accuracy of the achieved spatialization is unrivaled since it is based on actual distance measurements as opposed to coarse distance approximations used by other spatialization methods. A subjective evaluation (effectively, self-reported measurements) of our system (n=30) indicated no significant differences in user experience or intrinsic motivation between VR and traditional desktop versions (PC). However, participants in the PC group explored more of the universe than the VR group. This difference is likely to be caused by the familiarity of our cohort with PC-based games.