Cybernarium days 2002 - a public experience of virtual and augmented worlds

Are Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR) well suited for entertaining and educating a lay audience? In this paper we try to find an answer to this question and work out the conditions and requirements for successful installations. We will describe our testbed , the Cybernarium Days 2002, the world s first public exhibition exclusively dedicated to Virtual and Augmented Reality, which attracted more than 10.000 visitors in 6 days. We also present the results of the user questioning, which took place during the exhibition, and the lessons learnt . Furthermore we focus on software aspects, which enabled us to use low cost hardware and offered a way to build new exhibits in a short time. Since the raise or fall of a VR/AR installation is mainly influenced by its user interface, we present a classification scheme for devices and outline their advantages and disadvantages, offering other VR/AR-developers a guideline for their work on public VR/AR-exhibits