The UC Davis W.M. Keck Center for Active Visualization in the Earth Sciences (KeckCAVES) has been providing cutting-edge technology for interactive visual analysis of scientific data using immersive "virtual reality" (VR) environments to researchers in the UC Davis Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, across UC Davis, and elsewhere, since 2005.
This session will briefly delve into the fundamental difference between immersive (VR) visualization and traditional screen-based visualization, and how that difference provides significant benefits for scientific data analysis. It will then illustrate the practical operation of an immersive visualization facility based on concrete examples of scientific research that were made possible through KeckCAVES methods and software. The session will conclude with an overview of the newly re-emerging commercial VR market, and the effect of the availability of cheap VR headsets on sustaining the proven KeckCAVES model of supporting research.
This session is aimed at audiences with a general interest in scientific visualization and/or virtual reality technology, but does not require previous knowledge about these topics.
All software developed at KeckCAVES is available under the GNU General Public License v2, and can be installed under UNIX-like operating systems (primarily Linux). However, this session does not expect that attendees will have the software installed.