the visionarium - REU in Cognitive Communications

RESEARCH EXPERIENCES FOR UNDERGRADUATES
COGNITIVE COMMUNICATIONS NSF REU STUDENTS VISIT
THE VISIONARIUM
Wednesday, June 12, our REU students were
treated to a visit to Virginia Tech’s Visionarium,
also known as “The CAVE”. The Visionarium uses advanced visualization technology to enhance the learning process through integrating the various aspects of
problems in a visual context to aid in analysis to advance science, engineering, and education by integrating researchers’ data, questions, and workflows. On
their first visit to the Visionarium, our REU students got
the change to explore a “human brain”, in real 3-D.
Dr. Polys beginning his lecture and tour of the Visionarium.
The VisCube has three rearprojected ten foot square walls and a
top-projected floor with a cutout hiding a
MOOG motion platform.
The VisCube is the replacement to the old
CAVE. It features three 10′ by 10′ walls and
a floor of stereo projection screens each running at 1920×1920 resolution, as well as a wireless tracking system. VisCube provides the strongest sense of immersion the Visionarium has to offer, allowing the user to freely walk around models
in their virtual world.
A high powered desktop system,
DeepSix employs a tiled display
of six 30 inch Dell monitors capable of a
2560×1600 resolution each. At a combined resolution of 7680×3200, this is our
highest resolution single display available
in the lab.
To really take the immersion
to the next level, the VisCube
uses an advanced, wireless
Intersense motion tracking system.
It tracks the 3D position and
orientation of the primary user’s
(the ‘driver’) glasses and of a hand
-held controller, rendering the
scene to their perspective.
REU student Natasha Hatton explores the brain in 3-D
This allows them to literally
walk around objects within
their virtual world, providing a
natural way of attaining
perspectives not otherwise
possible.
Tracked Glasses and Wand
The REU students are
considering the possible
use of the Visionarium to display
their data.
REU student Matt Davis
The Visionarium is located in 3050 Torgersen Hall on Virginia Tech’s main campus in Blacksburg, VA. For more information
on the Visionarium, please visit https://snoid.sv.vt.edu/visionarium/.
RESEARCH EXPERIENCES FOR UNDERGRADUATES 2013