Even at land-locked Mississippi State University, there's a quiet cove where researchers explore the ocean depths, sail above the clouds, or travel in between.

This COVE is an acronym for computerized virtual environment. Surrounding all who enter with a comprehensive array of artificially generated sights and sounds, it is located at MSU's National Science Foundation/Engineering Research Center.

Robert Moorhead, left, is using COVE to improve industrial desgin and testing

"The COVE is a room-size virtual environment that has three rear-projected sidewalls and a floor that is top-down projected," said Robert J. Moorhead, the ERC's scientific visualization thrust leader. "The design allows a user to be immersed in an environment, see what's going on and try to understand it."

The COVE is the second generation of a design that was originally known as CAVET. Developed at the University of Illinois at Chicago, CAVE was a multi-person "virtual reality theater" for scientific research.

MSU's scientific sanctum is funded in part by an NSF grant. The room-size area is being used to improve the ways industry designs and tests heavy equipment.

"We will be offering our services to Mississippi's farm equipment manufacturers and to the shipbuilding industry on the Gulf Coast," Moorhead said, noting that similar facilities already are operating in two Midwestern states.

MSU's engineering research center is recognized as one of the top 500 supercomputer sites in the world.

Moorhead said its COVE is one of only about two dozen similar virtual environments in the nation and the only one in the Southeast.