The CRC for Advanced Computational Systems (ACSys) was established in 1993 as part of the Australian Commonwealth Government's Cooperative Research Centres Program. It is an unincorporated collaborative venture between: The Australian National University, CSIRO, Digital Equipment Corporation, Fujitsu, StorageTek, Silicon Graphics, and Sun Microsystems. ACSys has evolved from its initial theme of `high-performance computing' to our current focus on the integration of advanced technologies - rapid information access, large scale data management, high-speed computation and broadband networks - to handle ever-increasing amounts of information. This is reflected in the theme phrase for ACSys: "Managing the information explosion".
The ACSys VE Program
The ACSys Virtual Environments (VE) Program is one of five flagship programs in ACSys. The goal of the VE Program is to investigate the application of virtual reality technologies to modelling and visualizing complex data sets. The VE Program is staffed by a combination of ANU and CSIRO researchers, is the focus area for a number of Ph.D. students, and collaborates with a number of industry partners. Central to the ACSys VE Program is the ACSys VE Laboratory, which consists of a variety of leading edge VE devices.
The ACSys COVE Project
The ultimate goal for the use of virtual environments is the seamless sharing of a virtual space across large distances. This collaborative sharing has enormous potential in a wide variety of application areas in science, industry, and education. Although collaborative working between remote users has been practical for some time (tele-conferencing, shared whiteboards, etc.), until recently the lack of richness of the shared environment with which users have been able to interact has limited the usefulness of such collaborations. Today's virtual environment technology, combined with current networking technology, has made the collaborative interaction with rich and complex virtual spaces feasible.
The COVE project was officially started in July of 1998. The goal of
the project is to facilitate the acceptance and use of collaborative
VE technology in the Australian science, industry, and education sectors
through the development of collaborative VE system and software infrastructure.
The longer-term goal of the COVE project is to enable remote users of VE
environments to share a virtual space. Such an environment allows:
Clearly, the advantage of collaborative virtual spaces is the
richness and the complexity of the space that can be explored. The
COVE project will focus on a small number of collaborative
VE sub-projects that will investigate the potential of this technology.
Current sub-projects in the COVE Project are: