NAVE: Low-Cost Spatially Immersive Display
2000 · VR · Immersive Displays · Audio · Research
NAVE
The NAVE was a project to develop a low-cost immersive projection display for the presentation of virtual environments. The work placed equal emphasis on both graphics and audio, with the goal of creating a compelling immersive system at a fraction of the cost of a traditional CAVE installation.
At the time, the project pushed on what could be done with comparatively inexpensive projection hardware and a pragmatic engineering approach to immersive display construction.
My Contributions
I worked on several core parts of the original system:
- Construction of the original NAVE installation
- Programming for the 3D audio environment
- Interlaced 3D display driver development
- Network synchronization across the three rendering machines
Research Context
In retrospect, the project was an important piece of early virtual-environment work around cost-conscious immersive systems. It demonstrated that a strong immersive experience did not necessarily require the full expense of the most established high-end display environments of that period.
The NAVE also led to follow-on installations and related research outputs.
Follow-On Systems
I worked on two later versions of the NAVE.
The first was the Balance NAVE, or BNAVE, installed at the University of Pittsburgh for research on balance disorders. I designed and programmed much of the initial virtual environment used in that work, including checker-textured tunnel environments intended to produce visual patterns that could trigger responses in susceptible patients and support balance-disorder research.
The second was a recreation of the original NAVE used with a geographic visualization tool called VGIS. I oversaw construction of that installation.
Related Work
- Pair, Jensen, Wilson, Hodges, Gotz, and Flores. The NAVE Design and Implementation of a Non-Expensive Immersive Virtual Environment. SIGGRAPH Sketches & Applications, 2000.
- Pair and Wilson. The NAVE: Design and Implementation of a 3D Audio System for a Low Cost Spatially Immersive Display. International Conference on Auditory Display, 2000.
- Jacobson, Redfern, Furman, Whitney, Sparto, Wilson, and Hodges. Balance NAVE: A Virtual Reality Facility for Research and Rehabilitation of Balance Disorders. VRST, Banff, 2001.