The Design and Implementation of a Toolkit for the Creation of Virtual Environments

Virtual Reality is a field that is steadily increasing in popularity and interest. New developments in both hardware and software have empowered developers with new devices allowing faster and better quality interaction with virtual environments. However, the emphasis of research in virtual environments has been more concerned with development of new display and input devices, as opposed to the investigation of different methods of interaction that a three-dimensional environment offers. This project designs and implements a three-dimensional, interactive, virtual environment development system upon an existing three-dimensional rendering engine. The aim of the project is to allow users to generate virtual environments with ease through a simple and intuitive user interface. Support for a gesture-based input device has been provided, as well as for more conventional two-dimensional input devices such as the mouse and joystick. By catering for a variety of input devices, various different forms of input have been examined in terms of their strengths and weaknesses. It is through the use of techniques developed throughout this project that designers of virtual environments may go about their work with greater efficiency and simplicity, allowing users to concentrate on the development of the environment, rather than being limited by the tools they possess