Virtual Reality Toolset for Material Science: NOMAD VR Tools

  • Rubén Jesús García-Hernández
  • Dieter Kranzlmüller
Conference paper
First Online:
Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNCS, volume 10324)

Abstract

We describe a free-software virtual reality system which provides material scientists with a tool to more easily study simulations of chemical systems at the atomic and molecular levels, and which is compatible with the NOMAD infrastructure (an international, open repository which is developing advanced analysis techniques and contains millions of materials). The system runs on multiple virtual reality hardware, from CAVE-like (CAVE\(^{TM}\) is a trademark of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees. We use the term CAVE to denote the both the original system at Illinois and the multitude of variants developed by multiple organizations.) to phone-based. Informal talks with non-domain experts showed positive responses, and a user study was used to confirm the usefulness of the new system by domain experts.

Keywords

Portable VR CAVE User study Material science CaO LiF 
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Notes

Acknowledgements

The project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement no. 676580 with The Novel Materials Discovery (NOMAD) Laboratory, a European Center of Excellence. The CO\(_2\)+CaO datasets were provided by Sergei Levchenko (Max Planck Society), and the LiF datasets by Caterina Cocci (Humbolt Universität zu Berlin). Figure 2, center and right were provided by Dima Nabok (Humbolt Universität zu Berlin). We would also like to thank the participants in the user study.

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Copyright information

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017

Authors and Affiliations

  • Rubén Jesús García-Hernández
    • 1
  • Dieter Kranzlmüller
    • 1
    • 2
  1. 1.Bavarian Academy of SciencesMunichGermany
  2. 2.Ludwig-Maximilians-UniversitätMunichGermany

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