Unilever looks at VR as a tool for integrated research

Over the past years, there has been an enormous knowledge explosion in the biosciences. Today, about 931 DNA base pairs have been identified. By 2003, the human genome project will probably be completed. The results are being stored in fast growing databases which are doubling every fourteen months. New technologies create the need for mass screening and thorough analysis. At the same time, huge amounts of biomolecules are being generated. The development of powerful data processing systems constitutes one of the main challenges at present.

This is the situation scientists and researchers are facing, according to de Vlieg, and they are eagerly looking for collaboration to merge external academic knowledge with the internal specific knowledge present in industrial companies. Their ambition to extract knowledge from the almost confusing amount of data requires high standard computational skills. Virtual Reality is presenting itself as an extremely useful tool to create an efficient intermediate infrastructure moving from data to both theory building and implementation.

In the knowledge creation process, it is of capital importance to connect people. The Virtual Reality Cave enables such contacts as well as interactive communication, thanks to the visualisation technology. It goes without saying that such collaborative and interactive visualisation should not be exploited merely for technology's sake but should be based on concrete consumer demands. They should by all means form both the starting-point and final goal of every virtual reality research.