2026 | Cottbus (DE)Making the Energy Transition Tangible
At the 3E Research Centre of BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg, LUVRE — Lusatian Virtual Reality Experiments — brings together immersive virtual reality and experimental energy economics research. At its core is a five-sided LED CAVE in which planned wind farms, hydrogen and CO₂ infrastructures can be experienced at true scale. Where plans and renderings once shaped the debate, researchers now have a robust basis for studying how energy and infrastructure projects are perceived and accepted — insight that feeds directly into planning, policy and the energy transition.
Four walls and the floor surround visitors with a continuous LED image at a pixel pitch of 0.9 mm, resolving right up to the limit of human visual acuity: no visible pixel structure, no shadows cast by the users, absolute black levels and colour stability across the full lifetime of the system. For the walkable floor, LED modules were purpose-engineered to carry substantially higher loads — manufactured from the same LED batch as the wall surfaces. Brightness and colour point are therefore identical across all five surfaces, eliminating the visible break between wall and floor that so often undermines the illusion. An active optical tracking system captures the viewer’s position and updates the perspective in real time, while a 5.1 audio system adds spatially precise sound to the image. Integrated climate control dissipates the heat load of the LED surfaces and keeps operating conditions constant.
The structural approach is equally distinctive. The entire installation sits within a free-standing platform whose upper level houses an experimental laboratory — two research environments on a single footprint, realised without any intervention in the building fabric. Kraftwerk Living Technologies delivered the project as general contractor: from the platform itself through LED, tracking, climate and audio technology to full system integration and commissioning, working closely with the BTU team, whose research requirements shaped the technical concept from the very first design stage. The outcome is not an off-the-shelf installation, but an instrument built precisely around the scientific question it is meant to answer.
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Read more about LUVRE at BTU’s Chair of Energy Economics
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