The Emergent Reality Lab (ERL) is an VR/XR research lab in the Department of Games and Experiential Media’s Center of Excellence in Digital Game Development at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. We’re interested in XR, play, and creative expression, in practical applications and in experimenting with new forms of interactivity and immersion.
The lab features a CAVE-type XR system, with stereoscopic wall and floor projection.
- 2 Digital Project M-Vision 400 3D projectors
- 4 camera Advanced Realtime Tracking system
- Intel Core i9 14500K CPU, 128GB RAM, 2x NVIDIA RTX A5000 25GB GPU's
Our primary software development platform is Unreal Engine 5 using nDisplay and LiveLink on top of NVIDIA Mosaic. Other game engines and environments can be used: the only requirements are (1) ability to render left and right eye to different view regions, (2) ability to define custom perspective projection matrices, and (3) ability to read the stream of tracking data over UDP.
People
- Benjamin Chang, Professor, Games and Experiential Media
- Dr. Silvia Ruzanka, Assistant Professor, Games and Experiential Media
- Yue Liu, PhD student, Critical Game Design
- Noah Leiter, PhD student, Critical Game Design
- Sky Sayed, PhD student, Critical Game Design
- Dr. Jerry Zheng
- Jacob Farese
- Dr. Bryan Kim
- Dr. Matthew Gantt
- Anton Hand, M.F.A.
- KS Brewer
- Sam Lebowitz, programmer, core systems, logic gates game lead
- Kayleigh Poynton, programmer, technical artist, chip flythrough lead
- Brian Diep, programmer, chip fab simulation game lead
- Juan Devarie, programmer
- Mike Konefaul, programmer
- Alex Hertz, artist
- Joe Pollock, artist
- Anisha Biswas, UI, writing
- Edward Tian, programmer, VFX
Projects and Research Areas
Game Design and the CAVE
CAVE XR systems have been at the forefront of immersive visualization since the 1990’s. However, VR game design has been focused on headset VR. The CAVE offers different affordances than a head-mount display, both in technical capability and in the kinds of play it makes possible. This project works to develop game design vocabulary in the CAVE, and create frameworks to open up game development for the CAVE.
XR,training, and manufacturing
The lab collaborates with RPI’s Center for Smart Confergent Manufacturing Systems to apply immersive and interactive technologies to challenges in advanced manufacturing, including virtual training, room-scale XR design tools, education and workforce development, and digital twins.
Inside Chips and Quantum: Immersive Experience
This project is an immersive XR experience in the CAVE about semiconductors: what the inside of a computer chip looks like and how it’s fundamental logic works, how semiconductors are manufactured, and how quantum is transforming what computers can do.
Shrink down to nanometer scale to exploree the interior of semiconductor. Learn to solve puzzles by connecting networks of logic gates, the fundamental building blocks of computers. And try your hand at operating the machines in a “Chip Fab,” some of the most advanced manufacturing devices on the planet.
Beneath Our Feet: Hybrid CAVE+Tabletop Games and Soil Microbes
Beneath Our Feet project is a unique hybrid cooperative art game that connects systems at the scale of human activity and environmental events with the hidden world of soil microbes, combining a tabletop game with a CAVE environment.
The goal of the game is to increase care and appreciation for microbes and their overlooked world. With multiple asymmetric perspectives, we aim to increase awareness of the large-scale changes affecting the world of microbes beneath us.
Publications, Exhibitions, Conference Presentations
- Yue Liu, Pengze Zheng, Silvia Ruzanka, and Benjamin Chang. 2026. Copresence in the CAVE: A Bibliometric Gap Analysis of Immersive Display Research and VR/XR Gameplay. Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 90, 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1145/3815598.3815697
- Silvia Ruzanka, “Microbe, Tabletop, and CAVE: A Hybrid Virtual and Analog Game about Soil Microbes and Climate Change,” Serious Play, Duke University, August 6 2026.
- Silvia Ruzanka, “Playing in the soil: a hybrid CAVE-VR and analogue game about microbes and climate change,” Animex Symposium on Game Cultures and Net Zero, Teesside University, Middlesbrough, UK and online, November 19 2025.
- Silvia Ruzanka, Beneath Our Feet, in Under the Understory, Group exhibition, The Soil Factory, Ithaca, NY, October 18, 2025
- Silvia Ruzanka, “A Hybrid CAVE and Tabletop Game about Microbes, Soil, and Climate," Campus Alliance for Advanced Visualization Annual Conference, University of Maryland, November 6 2025.