Simulating Surveying In Virtual Reality

Surveying has historically been done outdoors, and in order for students to gain hands-on experience, the outdoor laboratories have been a requirement. We present an environment where students can gain hands-on experience under the watchful eye of an instructor in several locations with varying levels of difficulty, all without leaving the comfort and convenience of the classroom. Virtual Reality (VR) technology has made significant leaps of progress in the past few years alone and is now at a point where performing high accuracy tasks in a virtual environment is feasible. We demonstrate how we use this technology to create a much more immersive and interactive environment than previous attempts at VR implementations, spurring visual and tactile learners much better than a conventional lecture. To build this, we modeled multiple environments and surveying instruments, as well as implementing a novel leveling technique for multi legged 3D models.