October 30, 2003

ADVANCED VISUAL SYSTEMS CHOOSES VRCO's CAVELib™

AVS is using CAVELib to bring rapid support of interactive 3D displays and PC clusters to AVS/Express Multipipe Edition.

Virginia Beach, VA, and Waltham, MA, October 30, 2003 – VRCO is pleased to announce that Advanced Visual Systems (AVS) has extended its AVS/Express Multipipe Edition™ (MPE) data visualization system to support Windows® PC clusters by using VRCO's CAVELib™ library. AVS/Express MPE for Windows extends the desktop capabilities of the popular product into the realm of interactive 3D (i3D) stereo immersive display systems such as CAVE’s®, RAVE’s™, and other multi-wall displays driven by PC clusters.

AVS/Express MPE coupled with the CAVELib exploits both the price and power of today's high-performance PC clusters to deliver support for affordable, dependable, multi-projector display systems to more organizations than ever before. PC clusters allow an organization to easily and effectively raise the sophistication of their visualization assets. Tiled, high-resolution display walls, as well as, multi-wall display systems are becoming prevalent within academics, research, and industry. Being able to employ PC clusters in place of enterprise systems drops the overall "cost per pixel" of information. VRCO's CAVELib enables visualization software developers, such as AVS, to take advantage of PC cluster technology without the time and expense of developing cluster support themselves.

By using CAVELib, AVS/Express MPE also gains head tracking functionality, for viewer centered perspective, and “6 degrees of freedom” input devices. By supporting i3D displays and perceptual computing interfaces, scientific and research projects gain the ability to rapidly understand 3D spatial relationships within their data that is not possible from desktop display technologies alone.

"We're very pleased that AVS chose to use CAVELib for their AVS/Express MPE product," says Matt Szymanski, VRCO's CTO. "AVS has a long history of being a world-class leader in visualization technology, and we obviously believe they went with the world-class leader in i3D capabilities." During the development of AVS/Express MPE for Windows, AVS and VRCO opened wider lines of communication for technical needs and information exchange that both companies have benefited from. It has been a symbiotic relationship that continues today. According to Jeff Tingle, VP of Engineering at AVS, "AVS/Express MPE for Windows takes full advantage of VRCO’s CAVELib technology to provide the ultimate data visualization user experience. We are extremely pleased to be working with VRCO in the delivery of next-generation software and solutions that are inspiring new directions in research and discovery in a multitude of fields."

About CAVELib

The CAVELib is the most widely used commercial API for developing immersive, interactive 3D (i3D) visualization applications. CAVELib 3.1, the latest release from VRCO for i3D application development, dramatically increases the user's ability to create visual solutions for a multitude of display technologies without concerning the developer with the intricacies of programming for a multi-wall or cluster system. The CAVELib's API abstracts the difficulty of those details, and enables developers to create high-end i3D applications to meet their unique challenges using IRIX®, HP-UX, Solaris™, Windows, or Linux® operating systems, on either enterprise systems or PC clusters.

About VRCO

Founded in 1996, VRCO (www.vrco.com) is an acknowledged leader in the data visualization market. The company designs and develops software that enables scientists, engineers, military, and business professionals to integrate massive quantities of data from disparate data sets into three-dimensional visual representations. As a result, these professionals are able to understand and analyze the data more effectively than otherwise possible, gain new and unique insights, and make faster, more effective decisions. Headquartered in Virginia Beach, Virginia, VRCO also has sales and consulting offices in the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, and the Far East. For additional product and pricing information, contact VRCO, Inc. at sales@vrco.com.

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About Advanced Visual Systems

Advanced Visual Systems (AVS) provides industry-leading, interactive data visualization software and solutions that help business, scientific and engineering users gain critical insight from all types of data. AVS' complete line of software products speeds decision-making by bringing information to life using the latest in graphics, Web-based and interactive technologies on all major computing platforms. For more information on AVS write to info@avs.com, or visit www.avs.com.

CAVE is a registered trademark and CAVELib is a trademark of the University of Illinois' Board of Trustees. AVS/Express is a trademark of Advanced Visual Systems Inc. RAVE is a trademark of Fakespace Systems, Inc. IRIX is a registered trademark of Silicon Graphics, Inc. Solaris is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.