CEM-VR is a virtual reality experience that lets people explore St. Augustine National Cemetery from anywhere, honoring those who served and died for their country while digitally preserving the historic site’s architecture, symbolism, and design. Sponsored by Dr. Amy Giroux and Dr. Brook Miller, the project makes the cemetery accessible to people who can’t visit in person—whether due to distance or physical limitations—and serves as a lasting digital record of the grounds. Rather than starting from scratch, this team inherited an existing VR codebase and focused on making it faster, richer, and easier for future teams to build upon. Their work included creating an automated tool to texture the most common type of headstone, reducing the complexity of 3D models so the simulation runs smoothly in VR, fixing inherited bugs, adding new models and visual detail, and establishing reusable development infrastructure. Built in Unity and designed for modularity, CEM-VR is also intended as a blueprint: the more reusable its tools and code, the easier it becomes to create VR preservations of other national cemeteries across the country—turning one historic site’s digital tour into a model for safeguarding many more.
