Visualization and virtual environments (VEs) have been two interconnected parallel strands in visual computing for decades. Some VEs have been purposely developed for visualization applications, while many visualization applications are exemplary showcases in general-purpose VEs. Because of the development and operation costs of VEs, the majority of visualization applications in practice have yet to benefit from the capacity of VEs. In this paper, we examine this status quo from an information-theoretic perspective. Our objectives are to conduct cost-benefit analysis on typical VE systems (including augmented and mixed reality, theater-based systems, and large powerwalls), to explain why some visualization applications benefit more from VEs than others, and to sketch out pathways for the future development of visualization applications in VEs. We support our theoretical propositions and analysis using theories and discoveries in the literature of cognitive sciences and the practical evidence reported in the literatures of visualization and VEs.

Immersive technologies such as 360° cameras and head-mounted displays (HMDs) have become affordable to the average consumer, opening up new audiences for storytellers. However, existing immersive post-production software often requires too great a technical or financial investment for smaller creative shops, including most of the country's newspapers and local broadcast journalism organizations. Game engines, for example, are unnecessarily complicated for simple 360° video projects. Introducing Immerj - an open-source abstraction layer simplifying the Unity3D game engine's interface for immersive content creators. Our primary collaborator, Professor R.B. Brenner, director of the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, organized hands-on demos with our team and journalists and designers from some of the top news organizations all over the country in order to follow a human-centered design process. In just over one year, a small team of undergraduate researchers at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) has created a potentially disruptive democratization of technology.

Through their experience with the ICERT REU program at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), two undergraduate students from the University of Puerto Rico and the University of Florida have initiated a collaboration between their home institutions and TACC exploring the possibility of using immersion to simulate perceptual disturbances. Perceptual disturbances are subjective in nature, and difficult to communicate verbally. Often caretakers or those closest to sufferers have difficulty understanding the nature of their suffering. Immersion provides an exciting opportunity to directly communicate percepts with clinicians and loved ones. Here, we present a prototype environment meant to simulate some of the perceptual disturbances associated with seizures and epilepsy. Following further validation of our approach, we hope to promote awareness and empathy for these often jarring phenomena.