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South Australian Virtual Reality Centre (SAVRC)

eResearch SA manages the South Australian Virtual Reality Centre (SAVRC).

The SAVRC is a facility for high-end visualisation and supports stereoscopic display via active shutter glasses, an immersive folded-screen wedge environment, as well as standard monoscopic projection.

Groups of up to 100 people can use the facility, which is available to university, industry and commercial researchers.

The SAVRC is located on the ground floor of the Santos Petroleum Engineering Building on the University of Adelaide campus, North Terrace.

Please book the SAVRC using the facilities booking form. Charges apply for some SAVRC uses.

SAVRC contacts

SAVRC tel: +61 8 8303 8029

Primary contact: Ian West
Tel: +61 8 8303 4306
Email: ian.west@adelaide.edu.au

Secondary contact: Paddy McGee
Tel: +61 8 8303 6452

Email: padric.mcgee@eresearchsa.edu.au

 

Facilities

 Computers

  • Access Grid: three separate Windows PC's for audio, video and display
  • Stereo PCs: run Windows-based applications, two have dual-Xeon processors and nVidia Quadro FX4400 graphics cards

  • SGI: Onyx 350, with three processing bricks with eight 600 MHz IP35 processors and 10GB of RAM, and three graphics bricks, each running one pipe with 1 GB of texture memory.

Projectors and screen

Three Mirage 2000 projectors, each at 1280 x 1024 pixels. Each screen is 2.3 x 1.9 metres. Display can be configured for a single 6.9 x 1.9 metre wall, or three single screens, or as a wedge with the right-most screen rotated up to 90 degrees.

Audio equipment

Ceiling-mounted PZM microphones, one radio microphone (hand-held), one lapel microphone, echo-cancellation, room speakers.

Amplifier can also accept VCR/DVD/CD audio. The audio system is being upgraded to allow 8.1-surround for sonification applications.

Video equipment

Four remotely-controlled cameras for Access Grid use. Projectors can also be used for VCR and DVD material. An electronic whiteboard also is available.

Motion tracking

Flock of Birds with head-mounted and mouse control units.

Software

Available software includes:

AVS Express

AVS Express is available in both the VisLab and SAVRC under Linux. In both cases, the Developer Edition is used, with the SAVRC also being multipipe-enabled. AVS Express is an advanced and very capable data visualisation package, which can import data in a wide variety of formats, and display those data in a great variety of ways.

Point data, volumetric data, surfaces, meshes and images may be displayed, and the visual output can be saved as image files, or as movie files where appropriate. Interactivity with the display is a key factor—rotating the display, zooming, changing display parameters, and so on. Processing of the numerical data is done via module networks which are connected graphically, so that for most users, no programming is required at this stage for data visualisation.

Display in the VisLab and SAVRC can be in stereo.

Chimera

Chimera is used for visualisation of molecular data in a variety of standard formats. It is available in both the VisLab and the SAVRC, and is stereo-capable.