What does CAVE stand for in the virtual-reality system introduced at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1992?

CAVE stands for Cave Automatic Virtual Environment, the room-sized VR system introduced at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1992.

A CAVE projects computer-generated imagery onto several walls, and sometimes the floor, surrounding a participant. Users typically wear stereoscopic glasses and a tracking device, allowing the projected scene to respond to head or body movement. The result is an immersive room rather than a headset-based display.

The first CAVE was developed by Carolina Cruz-Neira, Daniel J. Sandin, and Thomas A. DeFanti. It was presented at the 1992 SIGGRAPH conference and became an influential platform for scientific visualization, engineering, architecture, and collaborative research.

CAVE is sometimes mistaken for a generic name for any VR room. In technical usage, it refers specifically to the acronym and the projection-based virtual-environment design. The word “cave” also describes the system’s surrounding visual enclosure, not a natural cavern.