We developed two virtual reality demonstrations for electromagnetism. For statics, we use spherical building blocks and superposition to calculate the electric field of a user-generated configuration of charge. The electric field information is displayed on a three-dimensional grid using vector arrows. A second demonstration displays field information for electromagnetic fields generated by a particle moving along a user-generated path (at arbitrary speed). We used the Unity game creation engine to efficiently develop the demonstrations, and tested them on an HTC Vive VR headset with handheld controllers.
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The static electric field, for example, may only be a book-keeping device, or it may be a real physical entity from the point of view of Maxwell's E&M. In the context of a gravitational field, the electrostatic energy density generates a gravitational field that is detectable by neutral test charges, establishing, in a context external to E&M, that the fields and their energy content are real.
This is ironic, in the sense that three dimensional visualization would allow the correct density scaling of magnitude, but is difficult to see once immersed in the visualization.
