In order to support the new supercomputer/cluster system by a visualization facility, the School of Health Information Sciences has built a new Virtual Reality System. The system allows researchers of the SHIS and of the Texas Medical Center to use virtual reality applications to explore scientific datasets calculated by simulation or acquired by experiment in an intuitive and truly threedimensional way.

The system is a large-screen, immersive VR environment that employs electro-magnetic tracking and stereoscopic glasses to ensure a high-quality perception of the virtual scene.

As SenSitus is able to drive VR systems, interactive and algorithmic docking of Xray and EM datasets can now be experienced in an immersive environment.

The System consists of two InFocus LP530 DLP projectors which can be used together with polarization filters and special glasses to support stereoscopic viewing. The projection system also features two mirrors which help to reduce the space that is needed to host the VR system - the distance between the projectors and the screen is shortened by circa 50%.

To allow a truly intuitive and natural interaction with the virtual objects, we use a magnetic tracking system - a Polhemus Fastrak - equipped with four sensors (including a special pen-style sensor). By the help of the tracking system the user is able to walk around virtual objects, to move closer to have a more detailed view or to manipulate the objects in a threedimensional way.

We employ a high-end graphic workstation with dual Intel Xeon Processors, and a high-end graphics card (Quadro FX2000) running under Linux to draw the 3D graphics in realtime.

If you are interested in using the system or if you have a scientific problem that could benefit from using interactive virtual reality and visualization methods, feel free to contact us.