An immersive online shopping system based on virtual reality

This paper proposes an immersive online shopping system based on virtual reality (VR). The background of the developed VR mall is for cross-border e-commerce. In particular, the architecture of this VR-based prototype is designed, which is composed by six modules, i.e., virtual mall, item display, online pay, interaction, gaming and ad-vertisement. Among these, the former there modules are essential, and the latter three are integrated elaborately in the system for shopping experience enhancement. The used commercial VR system is HTC Vive, which contains a headset, two independent controllers and two base station for localization. Wearing the headset, customers can roam in the mall freely. Based on controllers, they can pick up items and even compare when two different items are picked up by two controllers. In addition, the customer’s position can be real-time tracked and localized, which is benefited from the support of base stations. All the content are stored in a VR-ready backpack PC, in this way the customer can walk in a space (e.g., 3×4 square meters) at will. Extensive experimental results and practical usage proves the validation of this system.