New version of the virtual laser laboratory "femtoPro" available
09/22/2023For several years, a team of physical chemists from our Chair and computer scientists from our university has been developing the virtual femtosecond laser laboratory "femtoPro". Now, a new version with numerous improvements, new features and unlimited free use has been released.
How can students learn the practice of safe handling of ultrashort laser pulses? To solve this problem, researchers from our Chair developed together with the Games Engineering group at the Chair of Human-Computer Interaction headed by Prof. Sebastian von Mammen the interactive laser laboratory "femtoPro" in virtual reality (VR).
At the Faculty of Chemistry and Pharmacy, the program has been in use since 2022 as a lecture-accompanying practical course as part of the lecture "Ultrafast Spectroscopy and Quantum Control" by Prof. Tobias Brixner. Students receive a VR headset on loan for one semester and complete weekly practical exercises, which are discussed in the lecture with regard to technical and safety-relevant aspects. It is also planned to use femtoPro in other practical courses related to optics and spectroscopy.
Over the last year, femtoPro developers have worked hard to refactor the entire codebase. In the new femtoPro version 0.5.0, the refactoring resulted in performance improvements on VR headsets, leading to higher frame rates and an even smoother user experience. As a major new feature, it is now possible to use the delay stage to perform automated scans with interferometric accuracy, which can be used, for example, to record interferometric autocorrelations.
Likewise, the user interface of the delay stage has been redesigned to enable more intuitive operation. A complete list of all changes can be accessed on the femtoPro website. Importantly, version 0.5.0 can now be used free of charge and for an unlimited time. Thus, interested parties have virtually unlimited access to a femtosecond laser laboratory.
The development of the program is far from being complete. The development team is already working actively on the next exciting features.
