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CAVE Applications

What gets you in the CAVE? The CAVE is a system of hardware and software which enable an immersive virtual environment. CAVEs have been in existence since 1992, but they usually run on SGI systems. The CAVE at Cornell is one of a newer variety which run on distributed PC systems. Ours is the first to run on Windows.

A consequence of being an early adopter of the distributed CAVE is that we cannot immediately run most traditional CAVE applications. They need extra internal logic to distribute data across the PCs. That limits the tools currently available, but many more are expected soon. One thing the CAVE currently does well is display anything created for OpenInventor or VRML. Many solid models from various display programs will convert easily to VRML. We look at structural images and protein structures all the time. There are applications which will soon use the CAVE immersively. VTK should require a little tuning to show in a distributed CAVE.

What gets you in the CAVE? The CAVE is a system of hardware and software which enable an immersive virtual environment. CAVEs have been in existence since 1992, but they usually run on SGI systems. The CAVE at Cornell is one of a newer variety which run on distributed PC systems. Ours is the first to run on Windows.

A consequence of being an early adopter of the distributed CAVE is that we cannot immediately run most traditional CAVE applications. They need extra internal logic to distribute data across the PCs. That limits the tools currently available, but many more are expected soon. One thing the CAVE currently does well is display anything created for OpenInventor or VRML. Many solid models from various display programs will convert easily to VRML. We look at structural images and protein structures all the time. There are applications which will soon use the CAVE immersively. VTK should require a little tuning to show in a distributed CAVE.