CAVE Research: Scope of Work

Hardware integration and development: Building a scalable workstation

Couple virtual environments (VE) to massively parallel processors, superworkstations, massive datastores, networks
VE-to-VE tight coupling
VE-to-VE transmission latency compensation

System software architecture design

VE as a "scalable workstation" to the metacomputing environment
Steer computations/ invoke programs on supercomputers
Access massive datastores
Collaborative environments (intraCAVE; interCAVE )

Human/computer interaction and navigation

System-level software for interaction/navigation

Modes of interaction/navigation

Graphical user interfaces
Voice recognition
Gesture recognition
Tactile feedback
Force feedback
Motion control platforms

Modes of investigation

VE query formation
Navigation
Search key specification
Visualization annotations
Scripts
Retrieval

Synchronize all sensory and motor modalities

Adapt user interfaces so they work across VE platforms

Successive refinement

VE documentation

VE library and emulators

Develop emulators in OpenGL
Develop extensions to graphics libraries and toolkits to interface to VE devices (e.g., AVS, INVENTOR, NCSA Mosaic, PERFORMER, RENDERMAN, AutoCAD etc.)
Upgrade emulators and libraries to include volume visualization
Extend libraries to work with non-Cartesian data
Sound/sonification tools for data analysis

Create standards for an "open" audio library

Develop an audio library

Navigation tools
Localization tools
Sonification tools
Interaction tools

Develop auditory interfaces for scientific representation

Develop tool prototypes demonstrating use of VE sound libraries

Visualization applied to VE

Visualize very large datasets
Visualize volumetric datasets
Advanced rendering techniques (texturing, volume visualization, and lighting and shadows)

CAVE development

VE tools