Special Interest Group for Virtual Reality

by Jason Hartman

SigVR is the Special Interest Group for Virtual Reality. For those of you unfamiliar with VR, it can be defined as a fully immersive environment in which the user actually believes he or she is in the computer-generated world. The main project of SigVR over the past years has been and will be to develop RAVEn, the Relatively Affordable Virtual Environment. Currently, RAVEn is composed of a head-mounted display (two portable Casio TVs and VGA to NTSC signal converters), two PCs (486s or higher with ethernet cards or serial ports), and software written by SigVR members.

RAVEn is at EOH this year, displaying SigVR's Virtual Sandbox. In the Virtual Sandbox, you will interact with the world as if you are the size of an action figure. Inside the Sandbox you will find a sand castle, moat, a matchbox car, treasure, and other surprises.

In the future, SigVR hopes to add full body tracking, starting with head-tracking, support for the VRML standard (Virtual Reality Modeling Language), and other cool features. The Virtual Sandbox is entered in the Just for the Fun of It category, so it is bound to be FUN. Drop by the atrium of DCL and play in the sand.

SigVR usually meets Thursdays at 7:30 PM in 1330 DCL. For more information, or to confirm our next meeting date, send e-mail to sigvr@acm.uiuc.edu. Check out our web page at: http://www.acm.uiuc.edu/sigvr.

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Last updated 4 March 1996