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

提案#：CNS09-23393PI(S)：莱德洛，David H.；黑黑文，Jan S.；Karnadiakis，George E.；van Dam，Andries机构：布朗大学普罗维登斯，RI 02912-9002标题：磁共振成像/开发：科学的下一代交互式虚拟现实显示环境该奖项由2009年美国复苏和再投资法案(公法第111-5条)资助。项目建议：该项目开发一个世界级的9500万像素的交互式大视场沉浸式虚拟现实环境，旨在创建一个新颖、实用、丰富和富有表现力的交互、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快科学工作，研究创新的可视化方法，以加速未来的科学，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定了沉浸式显示器作为许多科学领域的研究工具的价值，并确定了一组目前未得到满足的需求，这些需求阻碍了此类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、对比度和大小；快速、响应、高精度和低延迟的跟踪；易于处理新类型的数据；以及可靠性。尽管有几个数百万美元的系统可能能够满足这些需求，但这几个系统与拟议的显示器-S色域、小物理空间要求和较低的复制成本-不匹配。预计该系统将通过适当地最大限度地利用全身、动作捕捉的用户交互和手势，支持比当前3D点击棒驱动的CAVEsTM更自然和有效的数据交互。通过与现代LCD监视器的感知质量相匹配或超过现代LCD监视器的感知质量，人类视觉系统将以更少的用户努力获得更多的显示信息。身临其境的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。集成用于快速创建虚拟现实应用程序的软件工具将解决易用性和可靠性问题。预计新工具将非常简单，支持一系列显示，并为手势交互提供丰富的支持。将建立一个监测程序，以查明相互作用的硬件和软件组成部分之间的潜在问题，以便在仪器延误之前查明和解决问题。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级别的显示技术(例如，分辨率、互动性或立体显示)。这些技术、监控系统和软件环境将分布在SourceForge上，以分别帮助加快全国的科学进步，开发多显示器应用程序，并确保可靠性。广泛的影响：在教育许多学生的同时，该仪器预计将在上述用户的所有科学学科中实现新的进展，包括更好地了解细胞及其包含的基因和蛋白质的工作原理(从而可以广泛提高生活质量)，动脉和移动动物周围液体的行为，动物运动(这可能导致仿生机车、漂浮或飞行车辆的改进)，人脑的连接，它如何影响人类的能力，以及它是如何降解的；还有火星。这些努力可能会产生新一代科学家，他们能够更好地使用科学可视化来分析研究问题，计算机科学家对科学家更了解吗？分析需求，以及能够加速身临其境的科学可视化工具的设计过程的艺术家和设计师。

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.