Caver Quest 3D Virtual Cave Simulation Of Snowy River In Fort Stanton Cave

Virtual worlds, or 3D simulations through which an avatar can travel, is becoming a common means to display products or provide training in new environments. This paper describes the steps in producing the 3D virtual simulation of Snowy River in Fort Stanton Cave, New Mexico. A traditional cave survey and map with cross sections was used to produce a 3D meshed surface of the cave walls using the Blender software package. Photographs were taken of the walls, ceiling, and floor and merged together. The merged montage was applied to the 3D mesh walls as a “texture”. Unity3D was used to integrate an avatar into the scene to view the cave. Unity3D was also used to generate pop-up educational cave notes with relevant text and more detailed photos. A gaming element was added to engage the public and test what had been learned before allowing access further down the passage. The detailed steps in this overall process, and the photographic techniques developed are described in this paper