Exploration of Geographic Location Using VR System

Abstract

Virtual reality is a term used to describe a simulated reality, where the user is shown the simulated world instead of the real world by using a Google VR headset. The popularity of virtual reality is rising every year. The goal of this project is to develop a simulation to visualize a geographic location in virtual reality, so user should be able to select a location and explore the area in virtual reality in 3D as if he/she was present there. To create the solution three parts are required: a source (place), a converter, and an engine. First the user chooses a geographic location and build into a 3D model in a 3D designs of software and export it to an engine-supported format. The file is then imported into the engine to display the model in virtual reality. Thus implemented a prototype solution by importing the 3D model into unity engine and merging some prefabs from Google VR SDK to the model. For movement purpose a Look Walk script is written and added with the 3D model. The programming language used for scripting is C.