Visualization

From this California Institutes for Telecommunications and Information Technology news release : "San Diego, Sept. 17, 2008 -- Its name sounds like something out of science fiction, but the StarCAVE at the University of California, San Diego is now a science fact. The virtual-reality environment allows groups of scientists to venture into worlds as small as nanoparticles and as big as the cosmos - permitting new insights that could fuel discoveries in many fields. Early users of the StarCAVE include UC San Diego researchers in biomedicine, neuroscience, structural engineering, archaeology, earth science, genomics, art history and other disciplines.

This BBC News article talks about the Dynamic Respiratory Endoscope, an augmented reality system, which lets vets assess live pictures of a horse's airways as it gallops at full speed. From the article: "The pioneering equipment could replace traditional methods where a horse is examined while running on a treadmill.

The University of Glasgow's Equine Hospital acquired the endoscope as part of a joint venture with horse training firm, Mark Johnston Racing.

The instrument will be used in the university's newly-launched Performance Horse Clinic.

Dr Patrick Pollock, senior clinician in equine surgery, said: "Within the animal kingdom, horses are considered to be elite athletes because of their unique anatomy and physiology.

This innovations-report article takes a look at the "Virtual and Extended Reality for highest safety and reliability of Embedded Systems” (VIERforES) project by the Fraunhofer institutes for Experimental Software Engineering IESE and for Factory Operation and Automation IFF together with the University of Kaiserslautern and Otto-von-Guericke University in Magdeburg.

This NYtimes article takes a look at the WorldWide Telescope project: a software by Microsoft Research which permits to explore a virtual reproduction of the universe. From the article: "The skies may be the next frontier in travel, yet not even the wealthiest space tourist can zoom out to, say, the Crab Nebula, the Trapezium Cluster or Eta Carinae, a star 100 times more massive than the Sun and 7,500 light-years away.

This Mechdyne press release reports the Texas Learning & Computation Center (TLC2) contracted with Mechdyne Corporation to design and build a 34-seat visualization theatre with 8 Megapixel (MP) stereographic projection. From the press release: "The new theater provides all of the academic departments of the University of Houston, as well as partners from the community and industry, with the ability to collaboratively view and work with complex data and computer generated imagery.

From the OpenSceneGraph website: "PERTHSHIRE, Scotland - 25th April 2008 - OpenSceneGraph Professional Services announces the release of OpenSceneGraph 2.4, the industry's leading open-source scene graph technology, designed to accelerate application development and improve 3D graphics performance. OpenSceneGraph 2.4 written entirely in Standard C++ and built upon OpenGL, offers developers working in the visual simulation, game development, virtual reality, scientific visualization and modeling markets - a real-time visualization tool which eclipses commercial scene graph toolkits in functionality, stability and performance. OpenSceneGraph 2.4 runs on all Microsoft Windows platforms, Apple OS/X, GNU/Linux, IRIX, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX and FreeBSD operating systems.

This NewScientistTech article reports Swiss and US researchers have developed an interactive virtual-reality system for flies. From the article: "They have built a wind tunnel for flies with changing scenes or images projected onto its walls. A camera tracks the fly in 3D, making the images move in response to it flying around inside.

The VR system offers a new way to gain insight into how flies' visual environment affects how they move and behave. The researchers say that they hope to build VR setups for other animals too.

Visualization Library is an open source C++ middleware for 2D/3D graphics applications based on the industry standard OpenGL 2.1, designed to develop professional applications for the Windows XP, Windows Vista and Linux/X11 operating systems. Visualization Library alpha 1 supports advanced features like OpenGL Shading Language, Frame Buffer Objects, Multiple Render Targets, Vertex and Pixel Buffer Objects, KdTree/AABB frustum culling, multilingual Unicode-based text engine, advanced texturing, DDS cubemaps, mipmaps, compressed textures and much more.

Visualization Library can be especially useful in 3D/2D scientific visualization, virtual reality, augmented reality, visual simulation, data visualization, presentations, multimedia applications, special effects, 3d/2d games.

This ETNews article reports GamiTech will commercialize VR display house service next month, utilizing special cylindrical screen and multi projector. From the article: "A new technology is developed to replace display houses with cutting-edge virtual reality set. It can save resources for building and decorating such houses and cause no pollution from waste materials, attracting much attention from construction industry.

This NewScientistTech article reports climate researchers can now physically experience the complex data on their maps using a computer system that lets them "feel" wind speeds and other weather features using a joystick that simulates touching objects. From the article: "A trial of the system shows that it can help people understand how the climate works better than purely visual maps.