Nvidia, UW Team For SnowWorld Pain Management Game

Officials from graphics card firm Nvidia have announced that the company has teamed up with the University of Washington's Harborview Burn Center and Seattle based Imprint Interactive for new technology involving a virtual reality system known as SnowWorld, which aims to mitigate pain for burn victims. SnowWorld was developed using Nvidia's graphics technology, and is touted as the first immersive virtual world designed for reducing pain. In the game, patients are helped to forget about their real world pain by immersing themselves in SnowWorld's virtual alternative. The system offers an interactive journey through an icy 3D canyon, as players throw snowballs at anything they see, from snowmen and flocks of penguins, to even woolly mammoths. The SnowWorld system was developed at the University of Washington's Virtual Reality Research Center in collaboration with Harborview Burn Center and Imprint Interactive Technology, and was recently selected by the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum to be part of a new display titled "Design Life Now: National Design Triennial 2006." The exhibit will run through July 29, 2007, and more information can be found on the official website. "Virtual reality pain distraction results are very encouraging and a growing number of burn centers around the world are now using SnowWorld with their patients," commented Dr. Hunter Hoffman, a cognitive psychologist and director of the University of Washington's Virtual Reality Research Center.