By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology
A new facility at Virginia Tech uses large-scale visuals and sound to immerse users in vast amounts of data. Imagine walking through a black room four stories high, 50 feet wide and 40 feet deep, populated with speakers. As you move through the space wearing a head-mounted display (no mouse, keyboard or joystick needed), you’re immersed in vast amounts of data — both visually and aurally — collected from an actual storm that took place a little more than two years ago. As the recorded data shows the formation of some kind of supercell, your ears detect something distinct from every other sound that permeates the space — akin to hearing your name being spoken across the room during a lively cocktail party. You turn and move toward the sound to explore it further. Before your eyes a gigantic tornado forms. Your experience — and the exploration sparked by it — could result in a better understanding of how to interpret the data generated by tornados such as the one that hit Moore, OK, in May 2013, killing two dozen people and injuring hundreds.
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