.. _about:

About iDaVIE
============
iDaVIE (the immersive Data Visualisation Interactive Explorer) was conceived by and is being developed under the custody of the IDIA Visualisation Laboratory.  It provides a Virtual Reality experience for data cube exploration. It visualises 3D data in an interaction 'box', a 3D block (or elongated cube) in VR space which allows the user to extract vital feedback information about the enclosed data (including cumulative statistics and historical data).

Contributors
------------
The development of the iDaVIE project is a joint effort from:

* `The Inter-university Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy (IDIA) <https://www.idia.ac.za>`_
* `The IDIA Visualisation Lab <https://vislab.idia.ac.za>`_
* `Osservatorio Astrofisico di Catania, Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF-OACT) <https://www.oact.inaf.it/en/>`_
* `Osservatorio Astronomico di Cagliari, Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF-OACA) <https://www.oa-cagliari.inaf.it/index.php?set_language=1>`_ – testing

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Software citation
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Please use the following DOI as a citation when using iDaVIE for publications.

.. image:: https://zenodo.org/badge/DOI/10.5281/zenodo.4614115.svg
   :target: https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.4614115

Other relevant references are:

* "Exploring and Interrogating Astrophysical Data in Virtual Reality", `Jarrett et al. 2021 <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213133721000561?via%3Dihub>`_
* "iDaVIE: immersive Data Visualisation Interactive Explorer for volumetric rendering", `Marchetti et al. 2021 <https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020arXiv201211553M/abstract>`_
* "Virtual Reality and Immersive Collaborative Environments: the New Frontier for Big Data Visualisation", `Sivitilli et al. 2021 <https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2021arXiv210314397S/abstract>`_

Acknowledgements
----------------
* The Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy is a partnership of the University of Cape Town, the University of Pretoria, and the University of the Western Cape. 

* This project received support from the South African Research Chairs Initiative of the Department of Science and Technology and National Research Foundation.

* This project received support from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (MAECI Grant Number ZA18GR02) and the South African NRF (Grant Number 113121) as part of the ISARP RADIOSKY2020 Joint Research Scheme.

* This project received support from the South African Department of Science and Innovation’s National Research Foundation under the ISARP RADIOMAP Joint Research Scheme (DSI-NRF Grant Number 150551).

* This project received support from the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics.

* The team acknowledges the support from the broad astronomical community for testing the software and providing feedback. In particular, we thank Thijs van der Hulst and Paolo Serra for their substantial contribution and continued involvement in the project.

Notice
------
iDaVIE is mainly built using the `Unity game engine <https://unity.com/>`_ and with the following third-party libraries or adaptations of third-party libraries:

* `SteamVR plug-in <https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steamvr_unity_plugin>`_
* `NVIDIA OpenGL SDK Render to 3D Texture <http://developer.download.nvidia.com/SDK/10/opengl/samples.html>`_
* `NuGet for Unity plug-in <https://github.com/GlitchEnzo/NuGetForUnity>`_
* `UnityStandaloneFileBrowser <https://github.com/gkngkc/UnityStandaloneFileBrowser>`_
* `Recyclable-Scroll-Rect plug-in <https://github.com/CosmicElysium/Recyclable-Scroll-Rect>`_
* `CFITSIO <https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/software/fitsio/fitsio.html>`_
* `Starlink AST Library <https://github.com/Starlink/ast>`_
* `World-wide Telescope VOTable <https://github.com/WorldWideTelescope/wwt-windows-client/blob/master/WWTExplorer3d/VOTable.cs>`_

See our `NOTICE <https://github.com/idia-astro/iDaVIE/blob/main/NOTICE.md>`_ file for full licence information of the third-party libraries we use.

Copyright and Licence
---------------------
Copyright (C) 2024 IDIA, INAF-OACT. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the `GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) version 3 <https://github.com/idia-astro/iDaVIE/blob/main/LICENSE.md>`_ as published by the Free Software Foundation.

Contact us
----------
 * `GitHub discussions <https://github.com/idia-astro/iDaVIE/discussions>`_
 * `IDIA vislab help <vislab@idia.ac.za>`_ (vislab@idia.ac.za)