Zimmy Hwang UNREALTOURNAMENT FOR IMMERSIVE INTERACTIVE THEATER

CaveUT is a set of modifications to Unreal Tournament that allows it to display in panoramic (wide field of view) theaters. The result is a useful tool for educational applications and virtual reality (VR) research. Our modifications are open source and freely available to the public (see www2.sis.pitt.edu/~jacobson/ut/). CaveUT provides multiple views—left, right, up, and down—from one point in the virtual environment. It is also capable of off-axis projection, which supports correct display when used in the very small one-person theaters researchers refer to as caves. An important branch of engineering for VR applications centers on building an enclosure where imagery is projected onto the walls. An early example of this is a planetarium, which creates the illusion of a night sky, or an IMAX theater that displays a specially made movie on the inside of a half-sphere-shaped screen. Members of the audience experience some degree of immersion, the feeling of being there in the world depicted by the movie, because the screen covers such a wide angle of view. While film is capable of providing the most detailed imagery, producing the visual effects by computer has some distinct advantages. With the right software, scenes could be generated rapidly and with no special equipment. Most importantly, computer-generated imagery could respond to input from a performer or the audience itself. At this point it is more like an interactive game—a boon for entertainment and educational applications, as well as certain areas of research. An example of a fully digital display is the Earth Theater at the Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh (see Figure 1). Jeffrey Jacobson and Zimmy Hwang