How can you benefit?

HIVE is able to offer services and support, focused around an arrangement of activities such as visualization, interaction and computing technologies. We can help you familiarise yourself with these technologies, giving you (and your department/company) the support you require, when you require it.The technologies HIVE offers can assist you in developing your products and services. You may decide to hire our facilities to host collaborative sessions for group presentations and promotional activities for current and prospective clients. Or perhaps hold a design review/product development workshop for you and your staff, to create a virtual prototype or improve on existing techniques.To ensure you utilise the time spent in HIVE, we are here to help you understand and use the facilities, with minimum input, or structured continuous support, if you so require it.

What is an Immersive Visualization Environment?

These allow a user or a group to be immersed in a visualization of a 3D scene or object. Users walk around the scene as if they are walking around the real scene or object. The user interacts with the visualization to navigate through and control their position. This interaction can be with virtual tools, hand controls or haptic devices. Stereoscopic 3D vision enables users to learn and analyse much more effectively.

HIVE’s immersive stereoscopic display technologies include a 16 x 8 foot stereo work-wall, desktop stereo displays, head mounted displays and (non-stereo) dome displays. The large work-wall caters for single users, a small group for collaborative working or design reviews and presentations with audiences of up to 30 people.

Examples of areas where Immersive Visualization Environments can be used:

Engineering design review

Virtual prototypes are created of mechanical systems for review by designers and customers. Analysis is aided by visually displaying information, such as strain, onto components. The dynamics of the system can also be simulated by these virtual prototypes.

 

Design studios

These allow a user or a group to be immersed in a visualization of a 3D scene or object. Users walk around the scene as if they are walking around the real scene or object. The user interacts with the visualization to navigate through and control the visualization. This interaction can be with virtual tools, hand controls or haptic devices. Stereoscopic 3D vision enables users to learn and analyse much more effectively.

Urban simulation

A virtual environment is created at the design stage of a new construction development or redevelopment. This could be for the modernisation of a city centre, a new road scheme, a business park or a prestigious building. The actual surrounding landscape may also be included in these virtual models.

Virtual Trainers

A virtual trainer environment is created for training operators and personnel. This approach is beneficial as expensive equipment is not tied up for training, hazards during training are reduced and training progress is automatically assessed. Good examples include training of crane operators, control room operators and surgeons.

Scientific Visualization

This allows complex multidimensional data to be more easily understood by visual overlays 3D onto objects. Typically this data is collected from sensors or from a computer simulation. Examples include operating conditions inside a chemical plant, airflow over cars and atmospheric conditions.

Medical and biological visualization

This provides meaningful stereo 3D visualizations of the inside of objects and of the microscopic details of objects. Examples include visualizations of patient anatomy from MRI, CT and PET images and the cellular structure imaged using confocal microscopes.

High performance computing (HPC)

The high performance computing facilities of the centre will provide supercomputer performance for research groups and parties. These facilities will be linked with existing research computing facilities to provide a Campus computational grid for research. This grid will enable hitherto compute-bound problems and new problems to be solved.