Jacob Chesnut, Scott Shirley, Nicholas Soerens, and Mingzhen Wang
June 2021
Paper: J. Chesnut*, and K. Sung, “Interactable Topographical Map with Remote Cross Reality Collaboration Support,” in IEEE International Conference on Computational Intelligence & Virtual Environments for Measurement Systems and Applications (CIVEMSA), June 2022. Available: Full Paper, Conference Presentation, Presentation Slides.
Regular topographic maps are obscure to most people. The purpose of our project was to create a more intuitive 3D topographic map on PC and VR platforms for everyone. This project was developed in C# by using Unity and by using the Augmented Space Library (ASL) to implement multi-user collaboration.
Our project can generate two 3D terrain maps of different sizes based on a 2D height map image. Users can interact with these maps from either a PC or VR device, and multiple users can connect at the same time. In Topographic Map, users can walk freely on the map to view the terrain details and teleport between two maps. Users can also place map markers, and delete their or other user’s map markers; a route can be automatically drawn between these markers using A* pathfinding. Users can also draw routes on the map and automatically move along those routes. Users can choose to move either on their own or other users’ routes.
To help users check the topographic map more conveniently, we added compass, altitude, and speed information into our project. VR players also have access to a ruler which provides scale information about the map. In order to provide users with a real experience, users can change the sunlight for all the users in the room and users can place objects such as houses and trees on the map.
This capstone project improved our game development skills, and we gained an in-depth understanding of ASL. We hope our project can help teams, firefighters and others to comprehend the topographic maps more conveniently and reach their destination quickly.
Bachelor of Science Capstone Project of Mingzhen Wang
[Link to Capstone Presentation]