Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources

XR Future Forests Lab

Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality Applications

The XR Future Forests Lab develops virtual (VR), augmented (AR) and mixed (MR) reality applications, initially for forest and environmental sciences in particular, including research into advanced data acquisition and analysis and the creation of digital twins of real forests. These digital twins enable the detailed modelling and visualization of forest growth, management processes and environmental changes at different research sites. The lab combines the expertise of the Chair of Forest Growth and Dendroecology and the Chair of Sensor-based Geoinformatics to improve research opportunities and generate synergy effects.

By integrating extensive forest data sets with innovative XR technologies, the XR-Lab will enable simulations of natural changes and human interventions and thus make a significant contribution to both research and education in forestry and environmental sciences in the future.

The Lab is a service facility of the Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources for all professorships, for research, teaching and science communication. National and international networking with comparable institutions as well as with application and practice partners is sought. The lab will initially focus on forestry and environmental sciences, but will be extended to all disciplines represented at the faculty (e.g. geosciences, geography, environmental social sciences) in the future.

The establishment and operation of the XR Future Forests Lab is funded by the Eva Mayr-Stihl Stiftung for an initial four-year project period (2024-2028).

For more information see the German version of this page: https://uni-freiburg.de/unr-xrlab/