Our objective is to develop realistic and natural environments for human-computer interaction. Our digital humans (virtual soldiers) live in the virtual world.  In order to interact with them, we create advanced visualization systems that enable the user to be immersed, while allowing full interactivity with the virtual world.     

Our investigation of real-time rendering methods are in parallel with our investigations of real-time kinematics and dynamics methods...such that both calculations occur in real-time on the same platform.  Indeed, this reuqires the investigation of various formulations that can be executed in real-time.

Research in this area include the following:

- Real-time computational issues (how to communicate with external programs from the real-time simulation environment)

- Interactive and peripheral integration, which involves the integration of sensors into the real-time simulation environment such as gloves, sensors, tracking devices, sound, and many others.

- Visualization photorealism:  We continue to investigate methods and means of making scenes and products very realistic.  The level of detail and the level of fidelity and are issues that are addressed at all levels of the development process.

- Synthetic environments: A great deal of work has been expended on creating synthetic environments, whether for Santos human factors issues, or for design reviews, or for prototyping of manufacturing products.

Digital manufacturing: We have worked with companies like Rockwell Collins and Caterpillar to advance state of the art in the visualization of manufacturing prototypes, leading to significant reductions in costs.