DIY World Builder: An immersive level-editing system

This paper presents an immersive system for building virtual worlds from within the worlds themselves. The system incorporates solutions for editing and texturing terrain, adding foliage, water, structures, and text, adding and controlling lights, including the time of day, and texturing objects in the scene. In a tracked head-mounted display environment, the user controls movement using a hybrid solution combining real walking and pointing-directed flying, and selects and manipulates objects using a hybrid wand and forearm-mounted interaction tablet interface. The user receives immersive cues such as wind from fans mounted around the physical space and audio from headphones. Feedback through a vibrotactile belt and a novel passive floor technique are used to indicate to the user when she is approaching the edge of the tracked space. Preliminary user testing showed positive user experience and suggestions for future improvements.