Step into the Cube: Virginia Tech’s giant virtual reality room

An interdisciplinary research project is keeping VR weird

By Adi Robertson

From the outside, I look like the worst stereotype of a VR user as I walk around the Virgina Tech Cube. Not only am I blindfolded by an Oculus Rift as I feel my way around, the headset is sporting a 6-inch-high, slightly wobbly 3D-printed antenna. The Rift isn’t wireless, so I’m tethered to a laptop, which a research assistant is carrying around behind me. My gait lurches from tentative single steps to single-minded strides to sudden stops — sometimes because I’ve clipped through a wall in virtual reality, sometimes because I’m about to run into one in real life.

Read the whole story here.