MICE stands for Mobile Immersive Collaborative Environment.

So far, VR has been a single-user (lonely?) experience. MICE aims to address this limitation and enable two or more users to collectively be immersed inside virtual environements. The focus of MICE is to achieve this without using avatars, to make the experience as realistic as possible, and the system mobile. Compared to see-through Augmented Reality (AR) systems that are currently being developed and advertised, our system builds on our (iHR) technology that leans towards Augmented Virtuality (AV). The resulting advantage is that the system does not suffer from the transparency effect of those goggles due to the projection systems they employ. The video below shows a demonstration of our system at its current very early stage.

While MICE is currently envisaged for application in engineering design review (by professionals and/or other stakeholders), it clearly also has potential for use in gaming.

Videos

MICE in action. As can be seen, the two users can see themselves and each other (without avatar) fully immersed in a realistic virtual environment. In this case, the two users stand on top of a beam 100m above Philadelphia (we thank the Esri CityEngine team for the 3D model of Philadelphia).