Symbiosis of virtual reality and scientific visualization system

This paper describes a concept for the symbiosis of a virtual reality system and a system for scientific visualization, as well as an implementation (called ISVAS-VR) to evaluate the concept. The idea is to preserve the strengths of both systems in order to help scientists in analyzing their data by means of the joint synergy of both approaches. Motivation for this work is given along with a description of the two individual systems (ISVAS(dagger) and Virtual Design). Possible communication schemes are discussed and the communication techniques which were utilized in the implementation are presented, namely shared memory and pipes. Finally, interaction of the user with the compound system is described and a number of application examples are given.