VIRTALIS, one of the world’s leading Virtual Reality (VR) companies, announces the advent of three very different VR trackers.

Trackers are vital VR components, as they tell the computer where a head or a hand is in space, tracking movement and feeding that information into the visual display in real time.  Co-incidentally, three of Virtalis’s hardware suppliers have developed new trackers at the same time.  Each has different qualities, so they are suited to different types of job and different environments.

STUDENTS in the School of Computing and Technology at The Nottingham Trent University will be able to take their design work to the third dimension, thanks to a Virtual Reality (VR) system from Virtalis. 

An £800,000 grant from the Higher Education Funding Council of England (HEFCE) has allowed the university to develop a state-of-the-art facility, featuring a stereoscopic projection system and Virtalis’s StereoWorks software. 

Dr. Wayne Cranton, a reader in visual technology at Nottingham Trent, explained: “Our courses combine elements of art and design with audiovisual technology and engineering.  The new VR facility will act as an infrastructure for our students to explore and research how different display technologies affect vision and perception. 

VIRTALIS is celebrating its first birthday with an investment by venture capitalists, the North West Equity Fund.

David Cockburn-Price, MD of the specialist virtual reality (VR) providers, explained: ”Only a year ago, VR was perceived to be a risky area, so we did our Buy-In Management Buy-Out without external funding.  Even though it has been a great year, with a turnover double the size of previous year and new staff being taken on board, we realised in November that our expansion plans couldn’t be realised without more funding.”

AN AGREEMENT has been signed between FCS Robotics and Virtalis awarding the exclusive distribution of the FCS HapticMASTER in the UK to Virtalis. Haptics bring the sense of touch into virtual environments.

David Clark, sales director at Virtalis, explained: “This distributorship represents the missing piece of the jigsaw of our force feedback products. The FCS HapticMASTER gives real industrial weight haptics and will provide our customers with the power to closely simulate the weight and force found in all manner of tasks. With a maximum force of 250 Newtons, the FCS HapticMASTER can be used for simulation, training and ergonomic analysis.”

The Virtalis Group announces an alliance with Visionmax International Limited in the visualisation marketplace.

Virtalis technical director, Andrew Connell, commented: “We will be offering the Visionmax product line as part of our portfolio of visualisation products.  We hope to build on the success of StereoWorks by integrating elements of Visionmax into our systems and vice versa.  This is a bilateral agreement, so we will also be adding our technological expertise to some of Visionmax’s larger projects.”

Virtalis launched StereoWorks and StereoTools two months ago and since then the systems have excited much interest in the engineering research and entertainment sectors, with several contracts already announced and others in the pipeline.  The StereoWorks range consists of the latest stereo viewing hardware coupled with Virtalis’s own specialist software suite, StereoTools.  The basic system offers SXGA resolution, has two small projectors, a seven foot screen and a compact PC image generator with wireless control.

The multimillion selling videogame ‘The Getaway’ developed by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe’s Team Soho and exclusive to Playstation®2 incorporates advanced Virtual Reality (VR) motion capture techniques from Virtalis.

The player controls the movements of the in-game actors. Their moves are captured via real-time sensors which each feedback to the computer their relative position in space. This use of motion capture has helped to create the high level of realism which many believe is the secret to the game’s success.
Team Soho has approached Virtalis to help capture hand movement as well. Andrew Connell, technical director at Virtalis explained: “We have customised the 18 sensor CyberGlove from Immersion to allow it to co-habit battery power and bandwidth with MotionStar, a wireless 16 sensor body tracker from Ascension. This is a real challenge because 34 sensors covering a relatively small area generate an enormous amount of data. In order to transform raw data into merged images, Kaydara Motion Builder software is used.

The first of the new StereoWorks Virtual Reality viewing systems has been sold to the AI Group Limited. It is to be installed in a 60 seat ‘effects’ theatre at the Kalamazoo Aviation History Museum in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

The new range of 3D stereo viewing systems was launched earlier this month by visualisation specialists, Virtalis. StereoWorks consists of the latest stereo viewing hardware coupled with a specialist software suite, StereoTools. This combination enables high-resolution digital stereo movie playback at very high bandwidth and makes real-time stereo viewing accessible.

The multi-million dollar air museum is currently under construction and scheduled to open in Spring 2004. The theme of the new museum is aviation past, present and future. The effects theatre boasts a gigantic 180º screen, 18 feet high and over 60 feet in length.

The films will consist entirely of computer-generated imagery, created by Sheffield-based graphics house, Stormfront Digital Pictures, which Virtalis will integrate with AI Group’s full surround sound and motion seats.

Virtalis has just completed the design and installation of a Virtual Reality (VR) suite for the new Zuckerman Institute for Connective Environmental Research at the University of East Anglia (UEA).

Dr. Andrew Lovett, a senior lecturer in UEA’s School of Environmental Sciences, explained: “As much of our work analyses how people can improve environmental decision making, both singly and in groups, we had already used visualisation tools and therefore had firm ideas about what we wanted to achieve.  In order to see how landscapes may be affected by factors such as agri-environmental schemes, climate change and coastal management plans, we knew we would need a large screen that enabled 3D visualization of interactive scenarios in both stereoscopic and monoscopic modes.  We were all very impressed by the technical solution proposed by Virtalis with input from its partner, Visual Simulation Technologies.  It was clear they had really considered our decision making requirements and how they might be addressed.”

Virtalis has created StereoWorks, a range of systems that bring stereo viewing mainstream.  As well as supporting CAD software for real-time stereo design, StereoWorks also offers high resolution digital stereo movie playback at very high bandwidth.

Large scale Virtual Reality (VR) systems are well proven in achieving significant benefits for companies.  Virtalis is now able to make this technology available to a much wider audience.  The StereoWorks range consists of the latest stereo viewing hardware coupled with the Company’s own specialist software suite, StereoTools.  The basic system, which offers SXGA resolution, has two small projectors, a seven foot screen and a compact PC image generator with wireless control.  Prices start from £27,500, making the range significantly more affordable than competitor systems offering less functionality.

Andrew Connell, Virtalis technical director, explained: “There is now no need to experience CAD or simulation via an ordinary computer screen.  Our StereoWorks range supports all stereo-enabled professional PC software, such as PTC, Dassault and EDS.  For certain design models, real-time rendering can be slow, so viewing pre-rendered animations in stereo using StereoWorks engenders both communication and decision making.  Our beta testers have reported that long standing misunderstandings have been resolved and that marketing presentations have been transformed, all thanks to 3D visualisation.”

As part of an ambitious plan to develop a new drive line for its latest digger, Terex Compact Equipment (TCE) decided to do away with a physical prototype and turn instead to advanced simulation and Virtual Reality (VR).

Ian Davies, TCE’s engineering Manager, said: “Our physical prototypes were costing us up to £50,000 each, with each alteration leading to lengthy redesigns.  Costly design mistakes simply don’t happen with VR.  They are spotted and rectified, speedily and without compromise.  This is engineering design at its purest, enabling us to reduce both time-to-market and unit cost.

“An illustration is that it was immediately obvious in the virtual cab that the rear view mirrors had to be repositioned to ensure a good view to the rear of the machine. We redesigned their mounting brackets virtually and checked them out digitally before sending the new design to our prototype workshop.”

PTC’s Division MockUp2000i2 was used to model the digger’s exterior using source data from Computervision’s CADDS5X, but the 3D cabin detail was not available in time.  Therefore, the TCE team looked to one of the foremost advanced visualisation companies, Virtalis, a company with particular expertise in CAD to VR conversion.  Virtalis is also one of the world's most experienced users of PTC's real-time 3D visualisation products, having completed numerous projects since giving input to the beta version of MockUp over a decade ago.

VIRTALIS’S subsidiary, VP Defence Limited, has just delivered a brand new Virtual Reality (VR) trainer for the 7.62 mm General Purpose Machine Gun (GPMG).  This builds on the success of its Close-Range Weapons Simulator, which was installed at the Royal Navy’s HMS Collingwood two years ago.

Recent media coverage of the conflict in Iraq has demonstrated the enormous array of weaponry available to our armed forces.  The amount of training necessary to ensure that weapon systems are used efficiently and correctly is considerable.  Yet there are mounting pressures on training establishments in the UK to justify increasing manpower resources and counteract the spiralling cost of ammunition.  Nowhere was this truer than in the training requirements for the GPMG, which have been used throughout the UK’s land and sea forces for nearly five decades.

In one of their first uses in the commercial world, stereoscopic display equipment from Virtalis, the VR specialists, is being used to view real-time, 3D pictures of baggage.  The system, known as AXIS-3D, is a new generation of X-Ray machine and is currently undergoing trials at Heathrow Terminal 1.

Developed by Image Scan, the AXIS-3D represents a fundamental shift from traditional baggage scanning equipment.  The Company’s technical director, Simon Godber explained: “X-rays contain only 2D information, but the AXIS-3D stereoscopic X-ray system introduces a second view and therefore, by optimising the geometry and software to match the requirements of the human eye and brain, allows the airport screening staff to more clearly determine the shape of an object and its relationship to other objects within an inspected item of luggage.  Application requirements dictate that stereoscopic viewing is available throughout the passage of the luggage through the X-ray system, so we have created a 3D display which pans in real-time.  The Stereographics stereoscopic display uses an active modulator and passive, low-cost, glasses and both are supplied by Virtalis.”

As the only Polhemus distributor in the UK, Virtalis is poised to launch a new six Degree Of Freedom (DOF) tracking product line.  The Liberty Series represents a technological leap in state-of-the-art Digital Signal Processor (DSP) electronics.

Liberty has 240 Hz per sensor, giving immense speed.  Its Graphical User Interface (GUI) makes it intuitive, whilst its scalability and improved signal to noise ratios increase stability and resolution, providing consistently high quality data.  The combination of all these attributes places Liberty in pole position in the electromagnetic tracking technology field.

Prof. Bob Stone has just been awarded a Trophy of Honour at Europe's premier international VR event in Laval, Western France.  The trophy is in recognition of his "service to the European Virtual Reality Community" since 1987.

Prof. Bob Stone was recently appointed as Chair in Interactive Multimedia Systems at the University of Birmingham, but he continues part-time at Virtalis, as the company’s communications, training and defence specialist.

VIRTALIS has been named as the UK’s only distributor for the new FastSCAN Cobra, the non-contact digitiser, for fast scanning 3D objects from Polhemus.

Like its predecessor, the FastSCAN, the FastSCAN Cobra, instantly acquires 3D surfaces by gathering measurements made by sweeping a handheld laser scanning wand over an object.  The object’s image instantly appears on the computer monitor linked to the system and the finished scan is processed.  Any overlapping sweeps are combined during this processing, significantly reducing the time to develop surface models.  The system can be used with virtually any opaque object with low metal content and the 3D data can then be saved in industry standard formats for loading into other programs.

However, the FastSCAN Cobra is 50% smaller and 30% cheaper than its forerunner, making it more affordable and portable.  The supplied software makes the FastSCAN extremely easy to use - models can be viewed in real-time as a point cloud, a wireframe or as a smooth shaded image.  It is therefore the most advanced reverse engineering and rapid prototyping tool available. 

The scanner works by casting laser light over an object, while the camera on the wand views the laser to record a cross sectional profile of that object.  The embedded FASTRAK is used to determine the position and orientation of the wand, enabling the computer to reconstruct the full, 3D surface of the object.  Moveable objects may be scanned by attaching a second receiver to the object.

The FastSCAN Cobra has a myriad of uses, including design, archaeology, architecture, media, education and medical.