I was able to check out the CAVE today with the MIS society. I found a perfect description of it on the website: Like all CAVEs, Villanova CAVE provides viewers with an immersive experience viewing and interacting with 3D virtual-reality worlds, 3D big-data displays, and 3D models of real-world locations and objects.
Andrew Grace, the person who took us on the tour showed us 4 projects among a few dozen that have been developed so far. We started off by looking at the solar system. The distances between the planets are not accurate, but you can still see them being spherical and various in size. Then, we were placed in a house, where we can walk around and lift up some objects. The house has a living room, a kitchen, a bathroom, and some empty rooms. It’s kinda weird that they made the toilet and the sink so dirty! After that, Andrew took us to the Vatican dome. We were not allowed to take pictures because this project is exclusive to Villanova and the Vatican. Being one of the very few Augustinian school, we were trusted to create a virtual tour of the Vatican on its website and were allowed to have this image stored in our system. The dome, I have to say, is absolutely magnificent. Very tall and beautifully painted with arts. Lastly, we visited Vilanova’s chemistry lab in Mendel. This was a project done by a Villanova Class. They used floating points because it makes numerical computation much easier. Their frame rate is as low as 7-8 fps and when I was holding the controller and standing in the room, I still saw myself floating and drifting away!
Overall, it was a fun trip! I enjoyed it and had a great time asking Andrew so many questions, though I was a little embarrassed because I was the only person doing so! The only thing I disliked is that I felt so dizzy after less than 30 minutes. I think that’s what’s called motion sickness. My eyes were constantly moving but my inner ear doesn’t so my brain thought I was sick. I wonder if this can be overcome with a lot of practice?!
Trang "Tee" Nguyen 