Yther: A Proposal and Initial Prototype of a Virtual Reality Content Sharing System

Abstract

There are many virtual reality development tools, but we argue that none has solved the disparate problems of ease of content creation, openness of access for developers and broad support for a variety of immersive and nonimmersive virtual reality systems. Yther is a proposal and initial prototype of a platform for sharing immersive and non-immersive virtual environments. Yther doesn't propose a new content standard, but builds upon the Unity system. The first contribution of Yther is a clear separation of concerns between development of content (zones) and support for specific hardware. The second contribution is a set of abstractions that allow developer to author interaction techniques and behaviours without specific reference to the interaction devices that any particular runtime instance has. The third contribution is a mechanism within the Unity development environment for publishing content so that it can be made available for testing and sharing very easily. The current implementation of Yther is a prototype but it already demonstrates capabilities that distinguish it from similar systems.