Projectverse: A web-based Virtual Reality Platform for Visualizing Research Projects

This thesis addresses the design, implementation and evaluation of Projectverse, a web-based Virtual Reality (VR) platform created with the intent to provide a better mediumfor those who wish to inform themselves about the work of the TU Wien VR group.Projectverse offers a multi-user environment in which research projects of the VR groupare visualized as stars in star constellations on a night sky. Users can interact with these by shooting them using a laser gun. Upon shooting a star, further information about the project it represents is shown to the user. Finally, users can transition into prototype applications of research projects and gain first-hand experience with these applications in Projectverse.Projectverse makes use of the WebXR Device API for communicating with VR devices.The platform was developed in the Unity game engine, therefore we also used the UnityWebXR plugin, which allows us to use WebXR data in Unity. Furthermore, we use WebXR exporter, another Unity plugin, to build Projectverse in a state that allows it to be executed in web browsers. Multiuser sessions and networking features were implemented using Photon PUN 2 and Photon Voice 2. We chose these frameworks dueto Photon being one of the largest providers of networking solutions for Unity.Projectverse is extensible in the sense that researchers can adapt their own research applications to the platform’s demands - most importantly: browser-readiness - and subsequently deploy them to it. Such extensions to the projects available on Projectverseare included by the platform automatically generating a new visualization once the projects change.To simplify and accelerate the adaptation of project applications to the demands of Projectverse, we provide a developer toolkit for Unity that includes fundamental VR functionality such as grabbing, locomotion and UI interaction as well as prefabs crucialto using VR devices with WebXR.Our evaluation shows that Projectverse provides an engaging, motivating and fun addition to the VR group website to those who wish to gain a deeper impression of the research conducted by the VR group.