From handhelds to immersive platforms with X3D

Project: 
Portable Scientific Visualization

At Virginia Tech Advanced Research Computing’s Visionarium lab, X3D is used extensively to manage, exchange and view 3D models, animations and applications. From digital content creation tools to CAD, Architecture, fluid dynamics,  molecular simulation and more,  X3D provides an enterprise-scale solution for cross-platform visualization. Scientists, engineers and designers can view and share their environments from the flagship immersive venue the VT VisCube to web-accessible tablets.

In this image (VT), a student explores a DNA model (exported from VMD) in the VisCube. Immersive technologies such as screen-surround, stereoscopy and tracking leverage the human’s natural, embodied perception to understand structure and space. For example, the computational discovery of DNA’s elastic properties, described in:

Savin, A. V., I. P. Kikot, M. A. Mazo, and A. V. Onufriev, "Two-phase stretching of molecular chains", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 110, issue 8, pp. 2816 - 2821, 02/2013.

was illustrated in the VisCube (Image by Polys, Wood & Onufriev) and online as X3DOM.

Products Used: 
VMD, Paraview, Vivaty Studio, X3D-Edit, Instant Reality aopt