William R. Sherman

Virtual Chesapeake Bay: interacting with a coupled physical/biological model

The Chesapeake Bay Virtual Environment (CBVE) is a multidisciplinary, collaborative project that fuses 3D visualizations of numerically generated output, observations and other data products into a large-scale, interactive virtual world that supports investigation of coupled physical/biological and environmental processes. Although still under development, CBVE provides an application framework for integrating circulation and biological models with the computer visualization paradigm of the virtual world. In this article, we first briefly describe the physical environment and the observed effects of winds, tides and river runoff on the Chesapeake Bay system. Then we describe the CBVE components and conclude with our efforts directed at understanding how environmental variability may affect the recruitment and retention of the larval phase of certain local marine species.

Literacy in virtual reality: a new medium

Virtual Reality is a new and rapidly developing technology. As a technological extension to computer graphics, and in fact the computer in general, VR is a medium --- a means of communication. Like any medium, the use or reading of VR has to be learned. That is, the user becomes literate with the medium.Often, we tend to think of literacy in terms of whether one can read or write words on a page. However, that is just literacy of one medium (the written word). There are many forms of communication, and each has specific issues of literacy, as well as general issues that pervade all media. As a new medium, the language of VR is still in its infancy, therefore, the study of VR literacy must look both at the content receiver and the content creator.Like film, Virtual Reality is a medium that does not require much knowledge of the viewer beyond general life experiences. We are able to see and hear the content more or less as we do in day to day living. Because of this, it might be taken for granted that the viewer is literate in the medium. This is not necessarily so. He or she may be able to follow the action, but may be missing the underlying message and cues contained in the content.Much like learning to read and write, gaining literacy in this new medium requires effort on the part of the receiver. This paper will address those issues with which VR participants and developers must be concerned.

The Chesapeake Bay Virtual Environment CBVE: Initial Results From the Prototypical System

The authors develop a modeling framework that integrates hydrodynamic circulation models and various biological models with the computer visualization paradigm of the virtual world to investigate coupled linkages between physics and biology within the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem. These initial efforts, demonstrated at Supercomputing 95 on the ImmersaDesk, focus on how environmental forcing affects the flow in the Chesapeake Bay and how biological distributions change in response to this circulation. The authors use the virtual environment to visualize time- dependent, three-dimensional, multivariate ecological data sets. This visualization process greatly aids in the interpretation and synthesis of the supercomputer-based numerical simulations and provides new insights into the ecological consequences of physical and biological inter actions. Viewing, navigating through, and interacting with multidimensional fields (e.g., salinity, circulation vectors, larval fish distributions) in the virtual environment provides a sense of presence that greatly improves ones ability to understand inherently complex processes, thereby ad vancing the implementation of coupled physical-biological models. The use of data sonification to portray modeled data in the virtual environment also improves ones ability to interpret the numerical results.

A Virtual Reality Technique for Multi-phase Flows*

A virtual reality (VR) technique has been developed to allow user immersion (stereo-graphic rendering, user tracking and object interactivity) in generic unsteady three-dimensional multi-phase flow data sets. This article describes the structure and logic used to design and construct a VR technique that employs a multi-phase flow-field computed a priori as an input (i.e. simulations are conducted beforehand with a researchers multi-phase CFD code). The input field for this flow visualization is divided into two parts: the Eulerian three-dimensional grid nodes and velocities for the continuous fluid properties (specified using conventional TECLOT data format) and the Lagrangian time-history trajectory files for the dispersed fluid. While tracking the dispersed phase trajectories as animated spheres of adjustable size and number, the continuous-phase flow can be simultaneously rendered with velocity vectors, iso-contour surfaces and planar flood-contour maps of different variables. The geometric and notional view of the combined visualization of both phases is interactively controlled throughout a user session. The resulting technique is demonstrated with a 3-D unsteady data set of Lagrangian particles dispersing in a Eulerian description of a turbulent boundary layer, stemming from a direct numerical simulation of the Navier-Stokes equations.

Chapter 7 – Public Safety and Military Applications

Virtual reality is being applied in a variety of ways to contribute to the public safety and military operations. One of the highest uses of any technology is to save lives. Virtual reality is used to help save lives indirectly by training firefighters, police, and military personnel, as well as in educating the general public, in how to respond in various dangerous situations ranging from natural disasters such as tornados and earthquakes to acts of terrorism. Many applications appropriate for public safety and military have a requirement of being very closely coupled to the physical world. As such, hap- tic feedback and locomotion feedback devices can be very important. Much like commercial pilots learning to fly a Boeing 747 in a flight simulator, military pilots can learn how to fly an F-117A, and they must learn not only the flight control operations but also combat maneuvers under military conditions. For instance, the Virtual Reality/Intelligent Simulation (VR/IS) team at Sandia National Laboratories created a system for VR Assault Planning Training or Rehearsal (VRaptor). VRaptor is a system that provides the capability for end user instructors to create scenarios for situational training, including options to manipulate the environment as the training is taking place.

Applying Virtual Reality

This chapter focuses on virtual reality (VR) applications, its benefits, form, and genre. Form and genre are two terms often used to evaluate and discuss the content of media. Form is related to how the narrative is constructed and presented to the audience. Genre is a way to categorize style: Science fiction or mystery, opera or symphony, abstract or representational are all genres of particular media. In VR, genre is typically associated with the class of problem being addressed and form with the method of interaction and presentation. Through the examination of some of the application fields that have benefited from the use of virtual reality, one can get a better sense of how well VR can be applied in other fields. A standard architectural VR application has an obvious three-dimensional representation to make the virtual world look like the real world. Virtual reality has also been applied to other areas of use, such as medical, educational, and artistic uses.

Business and Manufacturing

This chapter focuses on virtual reality (VR) applications in the area of product development as well as examples of usage for training and marketing. Product development includes the use of VR for virtual prototyping , which is the use of a computer to simulate a design of an object or system. The use of VR as a training tool is spread across many fields. One notable example in the area of manufacturing is the training of assembly line procedures at Motorola University. VR is sometimes used as part of a marketing strategy to demonstrate that a particular company or product is high tech, forward looking, or just plain cool. Other potential areas for applying VR to business and manufacturing include the visualization of business information and farming data. Business visualization is currently a growing area of research among visualization experts, and has expanded into the medium of VR. VR is sometimes used as part of a marketing strategy to demonstrate that a particular company or product is high tech, forward looking, or just plain cool. In this case, getting people to remember and talk about the product is the goal. Virtual Reality gives the opportunity to advertisers of providing advertising that people want to participate in.

Chapter 8 – Art

Publisher Summary nThis chapter discusses several uses of virtual reality (VR) designed as artistic expression. By exploring these applications, many potential applications can be imagined. The use of VR for design and sketching allows one to create works of art while immersed in a virtual reality environment. These works of art may be manifested as purely digital virtual worlds that must be experienced while immersed in VR, or they can be created in VR and then manifested in some other medium. The Body Language User Interface (BLUI), from the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center, allows participants to create very fluid sculpture while immersed in a CAVE or other projection VR device. The Osmose virtual reality experience is the result of Char Davies and her team setting out to explore the use of VR as an artistically expressive medium. Unlike many other VR experiences, the goal of Osmose is not to accurately document or photo-realistically portray particular aspects of the natural world.

Multiphase Flows Rendered in Virtual Reality

A virtual reality (VR) technique has been developed to allow user immersion (stereo-graphic rendering, user tracking, and object interactivity) in generic unsteady three-dimensional multi-phase flow data sets. This article describes the structure and logic used to design and construct a VR technique that employs a multi-phase flow-field computed a priori as an input (i.e. simulations are conducted beforehand with a researcher’s multi-phase CFD code). The input field for this flow visualization is divided into two parts: the Eulerian three-dimensional grid nodes and velocities for the continuous fluid properties (specified using conventional TECLOT data format) and the Lagrangian time-history trajectory files for the dispersed fluid. While tracking the dispersed phase trajectories as animated spheres of adjustable size and number, the continuous-phase flow can be simultaneously rendered with velocity vectors, iso-contour surfaces and planar flood-contour maps of different variables. The geometric and notional view of the combined visualization of both phases is interactively controlled throughout a user session. The resulting technique is demonstrated with a 3-D unsteady data set of Lagrangian particles dispersing in an Eulerian description of a turbulent boundary layer, stemming from a Direct Numerical Simulation of the Navier-Stokes equations.Copyright