As part of the SPLINT bid, the Geography department at Leicester has just completed a major programme of installation and refurbishment of several laboratories in order to provide suites of high-specification PCs and UNIX workstations (Sun & Linux). Our MSc GIS laboratory provides a light, well equipped wireless-enabled space in which students can interact informally in its "home room" mode. Indeed, this air conditioned room is highly popular in the summer amongst a variety of postgraduate students as they interact across cohorts and levels.

A selection of technical and study skills books is located within the GIS and visualisation laboratories, providing spatially located reference materials to support practical teaching to complement library provision.

A further home room for postgraduates taking our MSc Environmental Informatics, MSc Sustainable Management of Natural Resources and MSc Global Environmental Change has also been refurbished to maintain parity of provision between students taking different Masters programmes, while our PhD computer processing room has also benefited from investment as part of SPLINT.

Both refurbished Masters spaces also serve as teaching locations for small group lectures or seminars and computer practicals. The GIS teaching laboratory can be reconfigured into two units, allowing us CPD and other external training courses while maintaining home room space for our continuing students.

A recent example of postgraduate use of the teaching laboratory for this combined practical/lecture purpose is its use for the Metier sponsored Remote Sensing course (April 2007), which drew candidates from across Europe to Leicester.

Software running in our dedicated GIS teaching laboratories includes ESRI products such ArcMap and ArcPad, Erdas Imagine and IDL ENVI together with Clark Lab's Idrisi Andes. Additional sockets and cabling also allow us to train students in the use of rugged tablet computers for use on field work within a laboratory environment.

In addition to these general laboratories, a further specialist visualisation suite has been created that is available research and academic staff on a project-by-project basis.

Visualisation suite

New to Leicester in 2006 was the installation of a small virtual reality theatre seating 12 people.

Our VR laboratory is small, providing an intimate and relatively immersive visual experience. However, class sizes frequently exceed the numbers the theatre can accommodate. Moreover, the fixed nature of the theatre means that there is a danger that our SPLINT work could become too inwardly focused. With these points in mind, we have also purchased a portable passive stereo projector rig and screen that can be set up in larger lecture halls on or off campus.

Our portable VR system is currently powered by a Dell M90 laptop. This second system allows us the flexibility to experiment with alternative run-time software as well as maintaining compatibility with the main theatre via the installation of Vega Prime.

As with the MSc GIS teaching lab, the VR theatre space has been equipped to serve a dual function. In this case, the back of the room can be configured as a small meeting space with interactive whiteboard, fixed video projection facilities and laptop. 

Behind the VR theatre is an interconnected modelling lab, used for geospatial work requiring particularly intensive processing power or graphics capabilities. This laboratory is also equipped with an A3 pen tablet, firewire cabling, and video and audio processing software to support the production of video diaries and podcasts.

VR related software installed in the visualisation suite and adjoining theatre includes Multigen Paradigm's Vega Prime to manage the virtual environments plus Creator for urban and/or abstract modelling together with Plenoptics Photogenesis. Bionatics RealNaT and Blueberry are assisting us with the representation of realistic natural landscapes. For those coming to our particular VR set-up with existing models, Okino Polytrans software provides a means of converting a range of pre-existing existing 3D models to our particular VR framework.

In addition to the use of VR as a field preparation environment, we are developing a mobile headset system using GPS and inertial sensors that will allow students to see individual co-located views of virtual representations.

Within SPLINT, our aim is to encourage students themselves to develop 3D VR representations; VR laboratories elsewhere can often be seen as the territory of research staff only. Two former BSc students, who graduated in July 2006, received student bursaries to develop VR projects this summer, while another 3rd year BSc student recently undertook an independent dissertation project visualising vegetation and topography relationships in the Tabernas badlands of SE Spain. New opportunities relating to virtual reality methods and modelling will form a component of our visualisation module within the department's MSc in GIS degree programme from 200/8.

It is our aim for the SPLINT virtual reality theatre to be used to foster inter-disciplinary collaboration connected with spatial literacy both in regard to research and also teaching projects. The 3D visualisation literature suggests considerable untapped potential for the use of VR in teaching and learning across a wide range of disciplines; chemical models, geological complexities, magnetic force fields, anatomical structures and reconstructed archaeological monuments are just a small number of possibilities.

Staffing and software licence resources are limited within SPLINT, and while we would love to be able to facilitate a bureau VR service for other departments at Leicester (or beyond), in practice this is not feasible. However, we would be delighted to introduce you to the facility with a view to collaborating on research or teaching bids at a variety of levels. Summer bursaries for promising technically able third year students post graduation, or joint MSc dissertation students, potentially provide financially realistic opportunities to pilot ideas and develop research collaborations and intellectual exchange on spatial literacy within your own discipline with us. We would be pleased to see the theatre as widely used as possible, but for longer research projects or regular theatre use we should need to discuss an exchange of resources or jointly authored research bid as appropriate, in order to cover staff time, additional software licences and sustainable upkeep and upgrading of the theatre as required.

To organise a demonstration of the VR laboratory or to book the VR meeting zone, please contact:
Bill Hickin bwh@le.ac.uk

For more information on the VR work of SPLINT, contact:
Claire Jarvis chj2@le.ac.uk
Jing Li jl185@le.ac.uk
Bill Hickin bwh@le.ac.uk