VIRUP : The Virtual Reality Universe Project

TL;DR

VIRUP is an open-source C++ software enabling immersive visualization of large astrophysical datasets in virtual reality, supporting various immersive systems and scripting for enhanced scientific analysis and presentation.

Contribution

It introduces a versatile, high-performance VR visualization platform tailored for astrophysical data, supporting multiple immersive systems and scripting capabilities.

Findings

Supports real-time rendering of terabytes of data at 90 fps

Compatible with VR headsets, 3D screens, domes, and panoramas

Used to produce scientific visualizations and documentaries

Abstract

VIRUP is a new C++ open source software that provides an interactive virtual reality environment to navigate through large scientific astrophysical datasets obtained from both observations and simulations. It is tailored to visualize terabytes of data, rendering at 90 frames per second in order to ensure an optimal immersion experience. While VIRUP has initially been designed to work with gaming virtual reality headsets, it supports different modern immersive systems like 3D screens, 180 deg. domes or 360 deg. panorama. VIRUP is scriptable thanks to the Python language, a feature that allows to immerse visitors through pre-selected scenes or to pre-render sequences to create movies. A companion video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJJXbcf8kxA) to the last SDSS 2020 release as well as a 21 minute long documentary, The Archaeology of Light, https://go.epfl.ch/ArchaeologyofLight have been both 100% produced using VIRUP.