Increasing Immersiveness into a 3D Virtual World: Motion-tracking and Natural Navigation in vAcademia

In this paper, we present a project aiming at integrating immersive virtual reality technologies into a three-dimensional virtual world. We use an educational platform vAcademia as a test bed for the project, and focus on improving the learning process and, subsequently – the outcomes. We aim at increasing the immersiveness of 3D virtual world experience by applying motion tracking for controlling the avatar and two technologies for natural navigation: immersive projection and head-mounted display. In addition, we propose the major types of learning scenarios for the use of the designed systems.