Virtual Reality and Immersive Collaborative Environments: the New
  Frontier for Big Data Visualisation
  The IDIA Visualisation Laboratory based at the University of Cape Town is
exploring the use of virtual reality technology to visualise and analyse
astronomical data. The iDaVIE software suite currently under development reads
from both volumetric data cubes and sparse multi-dimensional catalogs,
rendering them in a room-scale immersive environment that allows the user to
intuitively view, navigate around and interact with features in three
dimensions. This paper will highlight how the software imports from common
astronomy data formats and processes the information for loading into the Unity
game engine. It will also describe what tools are currently available to the
user and the various performance optimisations made for seamless use.
Applications by astronomers will be reviewed in addition to the features we
plan to include in future releases.
