Wichita State aviation center debuts new immersive visualization system

Wearing sunglasses adorned with antennae-like balls and wielding a joystick, Jeff Fisher stepped through the window of a Boeing 737 to pace its hull.

As he stepped close to the walls of the plane, they zoomed closer to him.

Fisher, the virtual reality lab manager at Wichita State University’s National Institute for Aviation Research, was walking through a virtual projection of the popular airplane using NIAR’s new large-scale visualization system. The Cave, as it’s called, consists of a fixed front wall, a floor and two hinged side walls on which virtual plane mockups like the 737 can be projected.

Measuring 10 feet tall, the Cave is powered by two full racks of computers positioned behind its front wall. Its infrared cameras bounce off the antennae-like nodes on Fisher’s glasses, responding to his movement to adjust the visualization as though he were walking through the physical plane.

The Cave – built in a partnership between NIAR, Dassault Systemes and Mechdyne Corp. – was funded by a 2015 grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration and matching funds from the university. It uses 12 LED projectors to display high-resolution images on its three walls and floor.

Fisher said NIAR hopes local businesses and airline manufacturers can use the Cave for engineering and simulation purposes, such as full-scale mockups of new designs. Other uses could include crash simulations or taking measurements to repurpose planes, Fisher said.

The Cave, which will move into the 3DExperience Center in WSU’s new Experiential Engineering building when it opens this fall, will allow NIAR to test data it can’t otherwise explore due to physical or economic restraints.

“I can’t just park one of these outside the lab,” Fisher said, gesturing to the projected 737.

The two flexible walls can swing 90 degrees to allow the Cave to be positioned as a flat wall display stretching nearly 40 feet, as an angled theater-shaped display or as a box-shaped immersion room.

This story was originally published June 21, 2016 at 6:09 PM with the headline "Wichita State aviation center debuts new immersive visualization system."