Sea Surface Rendering using Unity for Virtual Reality

Abstract

Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Metaverse are some of the most frequent words these days. Introduction of Web 3.0 is promising potentially big changes in everyday life of people by incorporating VR, AR and Metaverse. Virtual reality (VR) is fully imaginary or replica of the real world. Augmented Reality (AR) is the technology which enhances real world by superimposing virtual objects onto real objects. Metaverse includes both VR, and AR to create novel, interactive world. Once fully developed, meetings, workspaces, gaming, virtual tourism, etc., will all be integrated in Metaverse. In the research, we concern about creating such a virtual space where virtual tours are conducted to make the marine tourism more accessible for wider audience. We focus our efforts on the animated ocean surface, for which we leverage a set of wave spectrum models from oceanographic research. We discuss the intricacies of said models, as well as their fitness for real-time rendering. The findings of the study were applied to render the Sea Environment around Ulsan, South Korea. Additionally, some dolphin and whale models were added to the scene. The scene is set to simulate marine life and tourism. The Unity game engine is exploited to render the simulation and ease the development. The resulting scene were recorded and played on the whale watching tour boat on October 31, 2021, Ulsan, South Korea. At the end of the demonstration, we conducted a survey. In the survey, virtual reality sea surfaces were recommended as an alternative to the real-world marine tourism. Around 80% percent of participants supported the development of such virtual spaces.