MRI: Development of a Next-Generation Interactive Virtual-Reality Display Environment for Science

提案号：CNS 09-23393PI(s): Laidlaw, David H.；海斯海文，简S.；乔治·卡纳迪亚基斯；机构：布朗大学普罗维登斯，RI 02912-9002标题：MRI/Dev。该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。项目建议：该项目旨在开发一个世界级的交互式大视场9500万像素沉浸式虚拟现实环境，旨在创建一个新颖的、可演示的、丰富的、富有表现力的交互、可视化和分析，真正利用虚拟现实（VR）中的人类视觉和运动系统。这项工作旨在帮助加速科学工作，研究创新的可视化方法，以加速未来的科学发展，甚至利用沉浸式大视场可视化和以身体为中心的人机交互的基本优势。二十年的研究已经确立了沉浸式显示器作为许多科学领域的研究工具的价值，同时也确定了一系列目前尚未满足的需求，这些需求阻碍了这种显示器在新问题和新领域的应用。这些需求包括高显示分辨率、亮度、对比度和尺寸；快速，响应跟踪，高精度和低延迟；易于处理新类型的数据；和可靠性。虽然存在一些价值数百万美元的系统可能能够满足这些需求，但这些系统与建议的显示不匹配？S色域，物理空间要求小，复制成本更低。该系统有望通过最大限度地利用适当的全身、动作捕捉的用户交互和手势，支持比当前3D点按棒驱动的CAVEsTM更自然、更有效的数据交互。通过匹配或超过现代液晶显示器的感知质量，人类视觉系统将以更少的用户努力获得更多的显示信息。沉浸式立体显示器将与桌面显示器的感知分辨率以及卓越的亮度和对比度相结合。用于快速创建虚拟现实应用程序的软件工具集成将解决易用性和可靠性问题。这些新工具预计会很简单，支持一系列的显示，并为手势交互提供丰富的支持。将建立一个监测过程，以确定相互作用的硬件和软件组件之间的潜在问题，以便在仪器延误之前确定和解决问题。该系统的用户包括行星地质学家、系统生物学家、脑科学家、细胞和分子生物学家、研究动物运动（包括飞行）的生物学家、流体动力学家、研究动脉血流动力学的生物工程师、为科学家开发交互技术的视觉设计师、数字文学艺术家以及可视化和交互研究人员。在交互研究中，使用该系统的实验有望建立不同类别的科学分析所需的适当水平的显示技术（例如，分辨率，交互性或立体显示）。这些技术、监测系统和软件环境将在SourceForge上发布，分别有助于加快全国科学进步、开发多显示应用和确保可靠性。更广泛的影响:在教育许多学生的同时，该仪器有望使上述用户的所有科学学科取得新的进展，包括更好地了解细胞、基因和它们所含的蛋白质的工作原理（从而可以广泛地提高生活质量）、动脉和运动动物周围液体的行为、动物运动（这可能导致改进仿生运动、漂浮或飞行车辆）、人类大脑的布线。它如何影响人类的能力，以及它如何退化；和火星。这些努力可能会产生新一代科学家，他们可以更好地利用科学可视化分析研究问题，计算机科学家更了解科学家。分析需求，以及艺术家和设计师，他们可以加速沉浸式科学可视化工具的设计过程。

Proposal #: CNS 09-23393PI(s): Laidlaw, David H.; Hesthaven, Jan S.; Karnadiakis, George E.; van Dam, AndriesInstitution: Brown University Providence, RI 02912-9002Title: MRI/Dev.: Next-Generation Interactive Virtual-Reality Display Environment for Science This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). Project Proposed:This project, developing a world-class interactive large-field-of-view 95 megapixel immersive virtual-reality environment, aims at creating a novel, demonstrably useful, rich, and expressive interaction, visualization, and analysis that truly leverage the human visual and motor systems in Virtual Reality (VR).This work intends to help accelerate scientific work, research into innovative visualization methods for accelerating science in the future, and even leverage the fundamental advantages of immersive large-field-of-view visualization and body-centric human-computer interaction. Two decades of research have established the value of immersive displays as a research tool in many scientific domains and has also identified a set of currently unmet needs that block application of such displays to new problems and domains. These needs encompass high display resolution, brightness, contrast, and size; fast, responsive tracking with high accuracy and low latency; ease of use in working with new kinds of data; and reliability. Although a few multi-million dollar systems exist that may be able to address these needs, these few systems do not match the proposed display?s color gamut, small physical space requirement, and lower replication cost. The system is expected to support more natural and effective interaction with data than the current 3D point-and-click wand driven CAVEsTM by maximally utilizing as appropriate full-body, motion-captured user interactions and gestures. More display information will be made accessible to the human visual system with less user effort by matching, or exceeding the perceptual qualities of a modern LCD monitor. An immersive stereo display will be integrated with the perceptual resolution of a desktop display and superior brightness and contrast. Integration of software tools for creating virtual-reality applications quickly will address ease-of-use and reliability. The new tools are expected to be simple, support a spectrum of displays, and provide rich support for gestural interaction. A monitoring process to identify potential problems among the interacting hardware and software components will be put in place to identify and address problems before instruments are delayed. Users of the system include planetary geologists, systems biologists, brain scientists, cell and molecular biologists, biologists studying animal motion (including flight), fluid dynamicists, bioengineers studying arterial hemodynamics, visual designers developing interactive techniques for scientists, digital literary artists, and visualization and interaction researchers. Within interaction research, experiments using the system are expected to establish the appropriate level of display technology (e.g., resolution, interactivity, or stereographic display) needed for different classes of scientific analysis. The techniques, monitoring system, and software environment will be distributed on SourceForge to respectively help accelerate scientific progress nationwide, for developing multi-display applications, and for ensuring reliability.Broader Impacts: While educating many students, the instrument is expected to enable new advances in all of the scientific disciplines of the users listed above, including a better understanding of the workings of cells and genes and proteins they contain (which could consequently improve quality of life broadly), behavior of fluids in arteries and around moving animals, animal locomotion (which could lead to improved biomimetic locomotive, floating, or flying vehicles), the wiring of the human brain, how it affects human capabilities, and how it can degrade; and Mars. The efforts are likely to produce a new generation of scientists who can better analyze research problems using scientific visualization, computer scientists more cognizant of scientists? analytical needs, and artists and designers who can accelerate the design process for immersive scientific visualization tools.