New AVIE facility at UTS
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
The Vice-Chancellor of The University of Technology, Sydney, Professor Ross Milbourne, today visited UNSW’s iCinema Centre in the Scientia Facility which houses AVIE, its world leading 360 degree 3D virtual reality environment. The visit is in honour of the recent multi-million dollar commission by UTS for an AVIE system and support package based on the technology developed by the iCinema Centre. The commission forms the basis for a strategic research alliance between the two universities, through the iCinema Centre and the newly established Data Arena facility at UTS. The Data Arena will be located in the atrium of UTS’s new Faculty of Engineering and IT Building, which is set to be completed in April 2014. The two AVIEs can be networked so as to explore shared virtual reality spaces for collaborative research in all faculties.
UTS has engaged Immersive Realisation to design and construct the AVIE system. The AVIE at UTS, when networked to the AVIE at UNSW, will provide a world first platform for interactive virtual collaboration across geographically distributed locations. This will allow, for example, the interactive prototyping of real world architectural designs, with clients in one AVIE and designers in another, but both sharing the same virtual space and able to make changes to the same 3D design before construction begins. This collaboration forms the first step in the development of a globally networked AVIE system, interconnecting the AVIE’s in Sydney, Melbourne, Hong Kong and Karlsruhe (Germany).