STIMULATING THE GROWTH OF A CALADIUM PLANT FOR A WEB-BASED METAVERSE ENVIRONMENT

Abstract

ABSTRACT Studies on object realism in virtual environments are abundant, but tree growth stimulation in VR spaces like the Metaverse remains largely unexplored. This technology has the potential to significantly enhance the user's sense of realism within an immersive VR experience. Applications range from creating aesthetically pleasing virtual spaces to developing VR environments for scientific studies, designing realistic game scenes, and even constructing immersive virtual environments for disaster control and simulation training. This thesis presents a feasibility study on incorporating tree growth stimulation modeling into a web-based virtual environment to improve object realism. The approach focuses on a specific plant, Caladium Bicolor, and aims to model its growth stimulation using WebGL for a web-based VR environment. The evaluation involves three parts: a qualitative user test comparing the created model against an actual Caladium plant growth stimulation, a statistical analysis of data collected from the Caladium growth model, and a performance evaluation of the WebGL implementation. The results suggest that the proposed web-based approach to the metaverse that uses less computational resources, has significant potential as a foundation for a proper growth stimulation model. This thesis presents the proposed proof of concept and the evaluation results as its key contributions obtained from a simulated environment. Additionally, the thesis discusses the limitations of the created model and provides insights into aspects that require further focus when extending and implementing the approach for a real use case in an immersive virtual reality environment. Keywords: Computer Graphical Simulation, Realistic Growth Stimulation, Modeling and Simulation, Virtual Reality