X-Rooms: A PC-based immersive visualization environment

This paper describes X-Rooms, a PC-based immersive visualization environment with integrated spatial audio, video and graphics. The concept is similar to the original CAVE® [1], but it uses a novel web-based visualization system running on top of a PC-cluster with Windows XP installed. Compared to other common installations based on expensive high-end unix graphics systems, costs are reduced by up to one magnitude (depending on the installation setup) using of the shelf PC and projector equipment. Using the developed external API X-Rooms systems can be deployed in the same application domain as conventional CAVE systems; in addition several new areas are open for less expensive systems. Processing VRML the X-Rooms system is a high end visualization platform for interaction with online 3D web content. Furthermore, the X-Rooms content can be driven by the web.