Analysis of virtualization as a solution to VR-system sharing

International audienceImmersive Virtual Reality (VR) systems offer vast opportunities in terms of scientific research as well as in terms of industrial applications. However their construction and maintenance costs remain an issue. It is therefore essential to find means to easily and safely share VR equipments among multiple users in order to reduce such costs, as well as democratize their use. In this paper, we analyze the interest of virtualization techniques to administrate, maintain and share complex VR systems among multiple users with heterogeneous needs in software, drivers, operating systems and peripherals. Despite the general idea that vir-tualization techniques strongly impact performance, we show that these technologies can be a viable solution with a careful selection of virtualization tools and graphics hardware