The Metaverse - A networked collection of inexpensive, self-configuring, immersive environments

Immersive projection-based display environments have been growing steadily in popularity. However, these systems have, for the most part, been confined to laboratories or other special-purpose uses and have had relatively little impact on human-computer interaction or user-to-user communication/collaboration models. Before large-scale deployment and adoption of these technologies can occur, some key technical issues must be resolved. We address these issues in the design of the Metaverse. In particular, the Metaverse system supports automatic self-calibration of an arbitrary number of projectors, thereby simplifying system's setup and maintenance. The Metaverse also supports novel communication models that enhance the scalability of the system and facilitate collaboration between Metaverse portals. Finally, we describe a prototype implementation of the Metaverse.