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Welcome to the IQ-Station Wiki for commodity-based low-cost VR

This site is a place where the community of users of midrange-cost virtual reality displays can congregate and share information. In the past, our focus was on systems primarily constructed from Commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) components for a quality VR experience around the $10,000 to $15,000 price range. But that was during the era of COTS 3D-TVs, and before COTS HMDs.

Now however, the era of 3D-TVs has waned, but by replacing them with not-terribly-expensive short-throw projectors, and by using super-low-cost tracking from consumer HMD technology, we can still build larger fishtank-style VR displays (IQ-stations) for something reasonable — ~$7,000.

The software discussed here (VR libraries and applications) is often useful for both consumer HMDs, and these midrange-cost IQ-stations, as well as full-sized CAVE VR systems, and thus can be useful for VR pracitioners of the full range of system types and costs. (Though primarily oriented to those interested in immersive visualization — scientific visualization in VR.)

Integration Software

Most IQ-station systems presently in operation run VR applications built on one of two VR integration libraries:

• Vrui
• FreeVR

VR Applications

• Immersive ParaView — The general-purpose ParaView sci-vis tool in VR
  • ParaView Tips
• Toirt Samhlaigh — A 3D volume visualization tool
• LidarViewer — A point-cloud visualization tool
• VMD — Visual Molecular Dynamics
• ML2VR — Matlab to VR
• CQ3A — A world exploration application (with game-like worlds)

Commercial Applications

• syGlass — volume viewer for SteamVR on MS-Windows

VR Tools

• VRPN — Virtual Reality Peripheral Network tool for aggregating data from input devices
• ViveLighthouse — Accessing Vive Lighthouse tracking on Linux
  • LibSurvive — Building the LibSurvive library for Lighthouse tracking on Linux
• Monado — Open-source OpenXR runtime for Linux
• OpenXR — Building OpenXR on Linux

Visuallization Applications

• BuildingVTK (on MS-Windows)
• BuildingParaView (on MS-Windows)
• BuildingANARI (on Linux)

Other Applications

• Bino — stereoscopic movie player
• XVS — John Stone's stereoscopic image viewer

Rendering Libraries

• Barney — Cross-GPU Multi-threaded rendering library
• Visionaray — Open-source C++ Ray-Tracing template library

NIST Trans-Portable-VR

• NIST's Transportable VR System — modern IQ-station w/ short-throw projector
• Portable-VR Setup — setup instructions

Hardware (old)

The basic components of an IQ-station are:

• 3DTV Displays (and 3D glasses)
• Tracking Systems
  • ART SMARTTRACK
  • ViveLighthouse — Linux instructions
• Input Devices
• Computers
  • Virtual Machines

Community

For the past decade (apart from one "COVID year"), there has been a SIGGRAPH BOF with the topic of Immersive Visualization:

• BOF: Immersive Visualisation for Science, Research, Art and Metaverse Applications

Part of our community building efforts include bootcamps on Immersive Visualization. Thus far, we have hosted three successful events:

• Bootcamp in Indianapolis held March 25-27, 2013
• Bootcamp in Laramie held June 12-14, 2013
• Bootcamp in Little Rock held October 22-24, 2014
• Bootcamp in Idaho Falls held October 20-21, 2016

Related Publications

• [Sherman 2010] IQ-Station: A Low Cost Portable Immersive Environment
• [Sherman 2013] Immersive Visualization Bootcamps: sharing expertise, building community