Interacting with Neural Radiance Fields in Immersive Virtual Reality

Ke Li, Tim Rolff, Susanne Schmidt, Reinhard Bacher, Wim Leemans, Frank Steinicke

Abstract: Recent advancements in the neural radiance field (NeRF) technology, in particular its extension by instant neural graphics primitives, provide tremendous opportunities for the use of real-time immersive virtual reality (VR) applications. Moreover, the recent release of an immersive neural graphics primitives framework (immersive-ngp) brings real-time, stereoscopic NeRF rendering to the Unity game engine. However, the system and application research combining NeRF and human-computer interaction in VR is still at the very beginning. In this demo, we present multiple interactive system features for immersive-ngp with design principles focusing on improving the usability and interactivity of the framework for small to medium-scale NeRF scenes. We demonstrate that these new feature implementations such as exocentric manipulation, VR tunneling effects, and immersive scene appearance editing enable novel VR-NeRF experiences, for example, for customized experiences in inspecting a particle accelerator environment.