What Is Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE)?

CAVE stands for "cave automatic virtual environment," a pretty cool acronym. CAVEs are cube-shaped rooms created virtually and consisted of rear-projection screens that behave as walls. The first CAVE was developed at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1992 by Thomas A. DeFanti, Carolina Cruz-Neira, and Daniel J. Sandin during their demonstration of the technology at the SIGGRAPH conference that year. The CAVE is a virtual reality environment with projectors directed at three to six walls of the cube-shaped room. This is a video theater; the walls are made up of rear-projection screens. To see the 3-D graphics thus generated by the CAVE, users need to wear 3-D glasses. Users in the CAVE can see objects floating in the air, walk around them, and get a full 360° view. The CAVE was first developed by Professor Fred Brooks of the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) in 1992, who also invented its name. After seeing the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML), he decided to build his VR system using off-the-shelf hardware components that would allow him to create three-dimensional virtual environments on computer monitors while interacting with them using a computer mouse or gamepad controller. He then made these components available for other researchers at UIC so they could develop their applications using them and share information about their progress with each other through an online forum called The Cave Network. The "Cave Automatic Virtual Environment," or CAVE, is a room used to display lifelike visuals. It serves as an alternative to the traditional computer screen. Projectors inside the CAVE are used to display its visuals. An array of software is designed specifically for the CAVE. These include OpenGL Performer, OpenSG and OpenSceneGraph. Today, CAVEs are used in an array of industries, including geology, engineering, biology, art, architecture, physics the list goes on!