January 17, 2023, First day of grad school ! After orientation, I went to meet my advisor, Dr. Arya Basu, He had set up a tour of the Emerging Analytics Center at UA Little Rock... I was not ready for what I was about to see. a lot of cool things including CAVE, THE BEAST !!
I had seen pictures of CAVE systems before. Pictures do not prepare you for walking into a room where the walls become the display and scale suddenly stops behaving like it does on a monitor.
That first tour gave XR a physical reality for me. It was not a distant industry category anymore; it was equipment I could learn, experiments I could run, and questions I could help answer. The beast was intimidating, obviously. It was also an invitation.
Three-wall rear projection setup, stereo visuals, Vive controllers, stereo glasses, and a full simulation pipeline... The system runs on 7 machines with 14 MiddleVR instances, each handling a set of projectors. Everything talks to everything!!! PhaseSpace to VRPN to MiddleVR to the CAVE cluster, syncing glasses, controllers, ALL OF IT !!! It felt like walking into the future.!!
A few months later, I went to SIGGRAPH and met Dr. Carolina Cruz-Neira in person. Hearing her story, knowing I’ve worked inside the system she created... wild.
In February this year, I got to visit another CAVE at the EVL lab in University of Illinois Chicago. The original one. And it hit just as hard.
you know, what the real magic was? it was when I deployed my first project on it. I fired it up for 360° VR demos, tested interactions, learnt about troubleshooting node errors, and syncing projectors, deployed builds through a shared drive... It taught me everything from system-level debugging to immersive storytelling.
I even took my graduation photo inside the CAVE. It felt like a full circle moment ◡̈
That space inspired me do some of my best work, and I’m proud to be featured in the DCSTEM Research Newsletter (https://lnkd.in/dgABBgv8) for it.
EAC has been one of the best environments I’ve ever worked in. The tech is intense, the space constantly inspires you, and the people, especially my mentors actually care and pushed me to learn and grow.
Now that I’ve graduated, I’m looking for places that feel just as alive. I want to build, test, learn, and contribute to something real in XR. I’m especially excited about roles in XR engineering, immersive systems research, interaction design, or creative tech.
If you’re hiring, trust me, I’ll be that positive, curious, creative, and committed person on your team who shows up, figures things out, and makes things better.
Feel free to reach out here on LinkedIn if you think we should talk or if you're building something cool in XR.!
#VR
Looking back, mentoring has become one of the clearest ways I understand my own growth. Every question from another builder makes me articulate what I know, notice what I still need to learn, and remember how much a little encouragement mattered when I was starting.