What I am working on with the CGVR team and our partners — and the earlier projects that shaped the toolbox.
Multimodal XR — EU project, coordinated by the University of Bremen
Multisensory extended reality: combining visual, auditory and haptic channels into coherent immersive experiences. Rene contributes to the project coordination and the requirements definition (WP1).
Heterogeneous robot swarms for Mars exploration (DLR) — overall coordinator of the initiative
A swarm of rovers, hoppers and drones autonomously exploring the Valles Marineris. I coordinate the initiative as a whole across its partner institutions; CGVR builds the virtual testbed (VaMEx-VTB) for validating swarm navigation before any hardware exists, and VR interfaces for planning exploration missions.
Haptic rendering inside modern game engines
A plugin system that brings 1 kHz haptic loops, grasping and — most recently — multi-contact devices (UnrealHaptics-MC, Eurohaptics 2026) to Unreal Engine 5. Open source.
With Thammasat University and Mahidol University, Thailand
Haptic VR simulators for endodontics and indirect-vision dentistry, evaluated in randomized controlled trials; plus HIPS, a hip arthroplasty simulator with realistic bone-milling force feedback.
SmartOT / autonomous surgical lamps / shadow-free projection
Autonomous, module-based surgical lighting that keeps the wound illuminated without manual repositioning, and projection mapping onto dynamic, deformable surfaces without shadows.
Multi-objective packing of arbitrary objects into arbitrary containers
Sphere-packing based algorithms for dense placement of 3D objects, with applications from logistics to gravitational field modelling of asteroids.
Web-based benchmarking of collision detection libraries
The successor of our original benchmarking suite: upload your algorithm, run standardized scenarios on our servers and compare.
Earlier projects from Clausthal and Bremen. The detailed project pages are still online.
A bounding volume hierarchy built from the inside out using dense sphere packings — proximity and penetration-volume queries at haptic rates (DFG ZA292/1-1, BMBF Avilus).
GPU-assisted, prototype-guided sphere packing for arbitrary objects; yields an approximation of the medial axis as a by-product.
A collaborative multi-user haptic workspace with two-handed interaction and many dynamically simulated rigid objects. Winner of the RTT Emerging Technology Contest 2010.
A standardized, reproducible benchmarking procedure and object set for comparing collision detection libraries.
An open-source, OpenSG-based collision detection pipeline with broad-phase and narrow-phase algorithms (DOP-Tree, BoxTree, …).
Event-based kinetic data structures for updating bounding volume hierarchies under arbitrary deformations.
Simulating a virtual human hand for grasping, pinching and pushing in real time (DFG ZA292/1-1).
A simple cross-platform GLSL editor for teaching: vertex, geometry and fragment shader editors, live uniforms, built-in shapes and OBJ loader. With Markus Kramer.
Personal side projects: games I would like to play myself, mostly inspired by classics of the 90s and by PlayStation 2 games, generative synthesizers, MIDI tooling and real-time visuals, written in C++ with raylib, JUCE and Qt/OpenGL. All of it on GitHub.
A dark space opera action RPG: three heroes, a prologue and four acts, three endings, co-op for two on one screen. Windows, Linux, Steam Deck.
A top-down combat racer with a career and black humour: five leagues, weapons, feuds and a funeral director who earns from every crash. Windows, Linux, Steam Deck.
A 2D action platformer in HD pixel art: four episodes, 40 levels, nine weapons, four bosses, time trials and a level editor. Windows, Linux, Steam Deck.
A vertical scrolling shooter in the tradition of the 1990s PC shooters, with a workshop between the missions: 72 missions, co-op for two, boss rush. Windows, Linux, Steam Deck.
An arcade racer round the whole world: 781 real places in 202 countries, each driving its own way, real heights, legendary roads, seasons, festivals and 31 radio stations composed as you drive. Everything made in code. Windows, Linux, Steam Deck.
Real-time, audio-reactive music visualizer for Windows and Linux: 2,400+ GLSL scenes, 210 transitions, ten genre presets, transformation-chain labs with 100 variants each that walk with the music, video export (Qt6/OpenGL 4.3, 3D model import)
Five generative instruments -- Noctuary (ambient), Ephemeris (Berlin School), Phosphene (psytrance), Totality (techno), Parhelion (trance): their page, demos and videos.
An additive ambient synthesizer on the GPU: every voice twenty thousand sine waves in CUDA, a conductor in just intonation that plays all night, a modal hall of 65,536 resonances, physics as sound (fluids, Lenia, stars, black holes, weather), 16384 levelled presets. C++20, JUCE VST3 + standalone, Windows + NVIDIA RTX.
Berlin School generator: sequenced modular voices and a composer that plays whole pieces and night sets; circuit-modelled filters and VCOs, envelopes, LFOs and a modulation matrix on every synth. C++20 core, JUCE VST3 + standalone, Quest app.
Composes and synthesizes complete psytrance sets from a seed — Goa, Full-On, Progressive, Dark Forest, Hi-Tech. Standalone, VST3 and Meta Quest.
Trance generator: tracks and DJ sets composed from a seed and synthesised in real time -- the JP-8000 supersaw, a physical piano, a synthesised orchestra, the pump of the ghost kick; motifs checked against known tracks. C++20 core, JUCE VST3 + standalone, Meta Quest app.
Hypnotic Berlin techno generator: tracks of 32-bar plateaus and whole DJ sets, composed from a seed and synthesised in real time -- kick and rumble, a 909 kit, a 303 through circuit-modelled filters, dub chords, a DJ mixer. C++20 core, JUCE VST3 + standalone, Meta Quest app.
A drone-ambient synthesizer for slowly breathing clusters: just intonation, a conductor that plays all night, distance as the one number that shapes every voice, 24 source types, three reverb tiers, and 14592 presets measured by rendering them. Framework-free C++20 core, JUCE shell. VST3 + standalone.
Touch-bedienbarer MIDI-Router fuer ein Hardware-Synthesizer-Rig: Szenen, sechs eigene Generatoren (Harmonizer, Phrase-Arp, drei euklidische Sequencer, TB-303-Acid) und ein eigener Konfigurations-Editor. Qt 6, C++17, Windows.