GPS and smartphones enable users to place location-based annotations, capturing rich environmental context. Previous research demonstrates that blind and low vision (BLV) people can use annotations to explore unfamiliar areas. However, current commercial systems allowing BLV users to create annotations have never been evaluated, and current GPS-based systems can deviate several meters. Motivated by high-accuracy visual positioning technology, we first conducted a formative study with 24 BLV participants to envision a more accurate and inclusive annotation system. Surprisingly, many participants viewed the high-accuracy technology not just as an annotation system but also as a tool for precise last-few-meters navigation. Guided by participant feedback, we developed NaviNote, which combines vision-based high-precision localization with an agentic architecture to enable voice-based annotation authoring and navigation. Evaluating NaviNote with 18 BLV participants showed that it significantly improved navigation performance and supported users in understanding and annotating their surroundings. Based on these findings, we discuss design considerations for future accessible annotation authoring systems.

Immersive 3D Virtual Environments (VE) have become affordable for many research centers. However, a complete solution needs several integration steps to be fully operational. Some of these steps are difficult to accomplish and require an uncommon combination of different skills. This tutorial presents the most recent techniques developed to address this problem, from displays to software tools. The hardware in a typical VR installations combines projectors, screens, speakers, computers, tracking and I/O devices. The tutorial will discuss hardware options, explaining their advantages and disadvantages. We will cover design decisions from basic software and hardware design, through user tracking, multimodal human-computer interfaces and acoustic rendering, to how to administrate the whole solution. Additionally, we will provide an introduction to existing tracking technologies, explaining how the most common devices work, while focusing on infrared optical tracking. Finally, we briefly cover integration software and middleware developed for most VE settings.

Abstract To achieve a full‐scale simulation of a pyrite mine, a highly immersive environment becomes necessary and this research has led to a complex system enabling users to walk through a virtual mine in real time, presenting all the behaviours present in such environment. Some of the problems encountered are the tunnels behaviours, including highly contrasted images due to the presence of the head light, narrow paths, elevators, sound reverberation and tunnels texture shades. The use of immersive virtual reality enables the generation of high‐quality simulations, because it is possible to control several feedback mechanisms such as the degree of luminance of produced imagery and spatial sound. In this research, a projection infrastructure and tracking system were specified and developed, aiming at producing the best results for this kind of simulation. To achieve our purposes, distributed algorithms were developed to run in a cluster solution that drives a four‐sided CAVE‐like environment. The complete production pipeline is presented, ranging from the developed authoring techniques, enabling fast production of new content for the simulation, to the tracking techniques produced for the improvement of the interaction.