The VISIONAIR Infrastructure Capabilities to Support Research

The development of information technologies, the increasing complexity of the information to be handled and analyzed, along with the growing capacities in scientific and engineering simulations, call for the development of powerful visualization tools and methods. Unfortunately, for many research teams the investment in visualization facilities is not always justified with respect to the actual usage. To overcome researchers' difficulties in using sophisticated visualization and interaction equipment, the European Commission is supporting the integration and the access to advanced visualization facilities around Europe through the VISIONAIR project financed in the frame of the FP7 Capacities program. In the use of the VISIONAIR's physical facilities, researchers may also be supported by the Virtual Visualization Services for sharing and retrieving shapes and related processing software tools. This paper provides an overview on the possibilities offered to researchers by the VISIONAIR project with particular focus on of the Virtual Visualization Services infrastructure.