This week was all about CAVERN Jam, the first major public test of Spelunx in the hands of developers outside our team. The two-day event brought together eight participants who created six unique CAVERN experiences, each exploring different aspects of interaction, immersion, and spatial design within the space.
Beyond being a showcase of creativity, CAVERN Jam was a true usability test. For the first time, we were able to see how developers—some with extensive Unity experience, others primarily artists—navigated our toolkit, documentation, and development workflow. The results were exciting: participants could quickly set up projects, create compelling interactions, and adapt to CAVERN’s unique affordances.
At the same time, technical challenges emerged, reinforcing that real-world testing is essential. Issues like computer crashes, audio misconfiguration, and installation friction highlighted areas for improvement. However, the overall sentiment was clear: Spelunx made developing for CAVERN dramatically easier, and participants left feeling more confident about creating experiences in this space.
CAVERN Jam – Six Unique Worlds
Over two days, participants created and refined six interactive experiences, each showcasing a different strength of CAVERN. The final showcase drew over 20 attendees, including faculty, students, and other ETC developers, all eager to see what was possible in this immersive environment.
AlexHallFleshWall – The Power of Presence
A surreal, unsettling experience where giant eyeballs track the person wearing a Vive Tracker, creating an eerie sense of being watched. Interestingly, because CAVERN currently tracks position rather than head orientation, the person inside may not feel like they are being tracked, but everyone else in the space perceives the effect perfectly. This highlights a fascinating design consideration for multiplayer VR-like spaces.
Additionally, because the art was placed extremely close to the screen, distortion was minimal—a strong contrast to more expansive 3D worlds. Alex, primarily an artist, spent around 10 hours, mostly on modeling, and was able to integrate her work into CAVERN with minimal technical difficulty.
Josh’s Frog Choir – Multiplayer Interaction with Vive Trackers
A musical interaction where four Vive Trackers are used to trigger singing frogs, with volume and pitch changing based on player proximity. The design naturally encouraged different playstyles—players could place a tracker in one frog’s zone and leave it singing, or multiple people could move around dynamically to shift the composition.
This piece demonstrated CAVERN’s multiplayer potential, allowing spatial coordination and emergent behavior between players. Josh, a programmer and Spelunx team member, built the system in around four hours, showing how quickly interactions could be developed with the toolkit.
Jing’s Bubble Game – Transparency and Depth in CAVERN
Building on our provided sample scene, Jing introduced a bubble interaction mechanic, where players could use Vive Trackers to repel and pop bubbles. While simple, the interaction proved surprisingly engaging—players found joy in physically reaching out and watching bubbles react in real-time.
One of the most exciting takeaways from this experience was the way bubbles created a visual sense of depth. As they moved across the space, their transparency allowed players to see both the real world behind them and the virtual world inside CAVERN, reinforcing immersion in a way that was uniquely effective.
Terri’s Head-Tracked Anime Girl – Validating Head Tracking
A technical proof-of-concept rather than a full experience, Terri’s scene featured a dancing anime character that players could view from different angles using head-tracked rendering. This served as a gold spike, demonstrating that CAVERN could correctly handle dynamic head tracking—a crucial feature for future immersive storytelling and interactive projects.
Winnie’s Little Match Girl Experience – Immersive Storytelling
Inspired by a previous mixed-reality project, Winnie’s world aimed to blend spatialized sound and visual storytelling. The experience began with players lighting a candle using Vive Trackers, with a surround sound voice guiding them through a dreamlike transition into a beautiful world featuring a giant, ethereal whale.
Though technical issues prevented some elements from functioning—the candle script failed, and the computer was set to stereo instead of surround sound—the core environmental design remained effective. Even without full interactivity, attendees found themselves immersed in the scale and atmosphere of the scene, demonstrating that CAVERN’s visual potential alone is powerful.
Grace & Selena’s Femto Bolt Tracking – Exploring New Input Methods
As part of Anamnesis, another CAVERN project team focused on live-action filmmaking, Grace and Selena experimented with using Orbec Femto Bolts for motion tracking. However, because our toolkit currently only supports Vive Trackers, they faced integration challenges.
Despite the setback, their work reinforced the importance of future-proofing Spelunx for multiple input methods—something we will consider in later iterations.
Reflections from the Showcase
With over 20 attendees, the final showcase was an exciting moment—not just for the participants, but for everyone curious about the potential of CAVERN development. The reaction was overwhelmingly positive:
- Attendees were impressed by the immersive scale of the space, many expressing interest in creating future projects.
- Developers found the toolkit intuitive, with most participants reaching a fully functional setup in under 20 minutes—a process that previously took hours.
- The CAVERN Previewer was a highlight, allowing artists to see their work rendered correctly before testing in the space.
At the same time, developers identified areas for improvement:
- Manual installation of the toolkit via tarball was cumbersome, reinforcing our plan to move toward automated installation.
- Some experiences were under-tested before the showcase, leading to small but noticeable issues (such as the surround sound misconfiguration).
- Error messages in Unity needed better suppression, as certain warnings confused new users.
Despite these challenges, confidence in developing for CAVERN increased from 3/5 to 4/5 among participants, and our ability to push real-time bug fixes through UPM (Unity Package Manager) proved invaluable—we patched an issue within an hour during the jam itself.
Post-Jam Refinements and Halves Preparation
Following CAVERN Jam, the rest of the week was spent analyzing feedback, making refinements, and preparing for Halves presentations. Rather than focusing on what didn’t work, we looked at what worked well and how it could be improved.
Fixing Surround Sound and Display Configuration
One of the key refinements was adjusting CAVERN’s audio settings. By switching from 5.1 to 7.1 surround, we ensured that only the front left, front right, rear left, rear right, and subwoofer were active—avoiding unintended stereo configurations. This change, along with automatically setting Unity projects to 7.1, should prevent similar issues in the future.
Additionally, we worked with Steve to test different display mirroring solutions, ultimately shifting toward a 4th monitor setup to reduce warping issues.
Finalizing Sample Scene Updates
To refine the sample scene before Halves, we:
- Added a butterfly animation to better demonstrate movement across the curved screen.
- Adjusted skybox and shaders for more atmospheric visuals.
- Created and tested a CavernAudioSource component, but ultimately decided that audio tutorials were more valuable than an additional technical feature.
Automating Installation
Following participant feedback, we removed manual tarball installation in favor of a streamlined automatic install, significantly simplifying the setup process for future users.
Next Steps – From CAVERN Jam to the Next Stage
CAVERN Jam validated the strengths of Spelunx, while also highlighting key areas for refinement. With these lessons in hand, our next focus is:
- Finalizing toolkit improvements for Halves.
- Continuing to refine usability based on developer feedback.
- Looking ahead to more structured user testing with South Fayette students.
Week 6 was a milestone moment, proving that Spelunx is not just a technical tool, but an accessible way to unlock creativity in CAVERN. Now, we move forward with the insights we’ve gained, ready to make development in CAVERN even better.