Immersive virtual aquarium with real-walking navigation.

In this paper, we propose a new immersive virtual aquarium system that comprises enhanced navigation, shared user experience, and manipulation in virtual reality. The system utilizes a large studio that allows users to walk around naturally and operates as a surrogate for navigation in the virtual aquarium. It also provides an additional view that shows what is happening in the virtual aquarium to observers. The system can be regarded as a form of augmented virtuality as it superimposes a live video avatar of users into the virtual aquarium. In addition, each user can interact with virtual fishes via 3D gestures because the system also utilizes a gesture recognition method that is suitable for the physically large space. These features enable our proposed system to give users and observers a more immersive and novel experience than conventional virtual reality systems.