  With the further development of highly automated vehicles, drivers will
engage in non-related tasks while being driven. Still, drivers have to take
over control when requested by the car. Here the question arises, how
potentially distracted drivers get back into the control-loop quickly and
safely when the car requests a takeover. To investigate effective human-machine
interactions in mobile, versatile, and cost-efficient setup is needed. We
developed a virtual reality toolkit for the Unity 3D game engine containing all
necessary code and assets to enable fast adaptations to various human-machine
interaction experiments, including close monitoring of the subject. The
presented project contains all needed functionalities for realistic traffic
behavior, cars, and pedestrians, as well as a large, open-source, scriptable,
and modular VR environment. It covers roughly 25 square km, a package of 125
animated pedestrians and numerous vehicles, including motorbikes, trucks, and
cars. It also contains all needed nature assets to make it both highly dynamic
and realistic. The presented repository contains a C++ library made for LoopAR
that enables force feedback for gaming steering wheels as a fully supported
component. It also includes All necessary scripts for eye-tracking in the used
devices. All main functions are integrated into the graphical user interface of
the Unity Editor or are available as prefab variants to ease the use of the
embedded functionalities. The primary purpose of this project is to serve as
open access, cost-efficient toolkit that enables interested researchers to
conduct realistic virtual reality research studies without costly and immobile
simulators.
