14 DAY TRIAL // You're high in the sky over the Rocky Mountains in your F22-Raptor, three bogeys on your six, and low on fuel. The on-board computer repeats "Pull up! Pull up!" , you're diving and entering a tail spin, and...wham! No problem, tomorrow you'll do it again, because virtual battlespace will be just one of the applications you could experience when Iowa State University's Virtual Reality Applications Center unveils its improved virtual reality room.
The demonstrations will show off the room's new abilities to produce virtual reality at the world's highest resolution.
A 10-foot by 10-foot (3.3 X 3.3 meters) cube that immerses users in 3D-CGI (computer-generated images) and eight channels of audio, nearly $5 million in equipment upgrades and the technology that operates it and over 100 million pixels!!!
Iowa State University's C6 room is U.S.' first six-sided virtual reality room designed to immerse users in images and sound.
The graphics and projection technology that made such immersion possible hadn't been updated since the C6 initially opened in 2000, but now it projects 16 times the pixels, so the difference between the original equipment and the updated technology "is like putting on your glasses in the morning," said James Oliver, the director of Iowa State's Virtual Reality Applications Center and a professor of mechanical engineering.
Brand new equipment - a HP computer cluster featuring 96 graphics processing units, 24 Sony digital projectors, an eight-channel audio system and ultrasonic motion tracking technology - were installed by the Mechdyne Corp. of Marshalltown.
The project is supported by a U.S. Department of Defense appropriation through the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. And the best thing for last - the public is invited to tour C6 from 9 am to 4 pm Thursday, April 26, in Howe Hall on the Iowa State campus.
Featured applications will show how researchers are using C6 to visualize data from as many as 22,000 genes, train soldiers for urban combat, show students how plant photosynthesis works, display data from an atom probe microscope and help engineers visualize new products. A new demonstration application will also take you on a virtual trek to a tropical island, including a hovercraft trip over the sea and a dive to explore a shipwreck.
Or, you and your friends can stage an aerial combat tournament the likes of which you've never experienced before, and probably never will, unless you happen to own a small country and its air fleet!