NVIDIA Corporation, the worldwide leader in programmable graphics processor technologies, today announced that it has teamed up with the University of Washington's Harborview Burn Center and Seattle, Wash.-based Imprint Interactive on technology related to a pioneering virtual reality system known as "SnowWorld," which mitigates pain for burn victims.The immersive experience, which was developed with NVIDIA graphics, has been selected by the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum to be part of a display titled "Design Life Now: National Design Triennial 2006." Inaugurated in 2000, the Triennial seeks out and presents the most innovative American designs from the prior three years in a variety of fields, including product design, architecture, furniture, film, graphics, new technologies, animation, science, medicine, and fashion. The exhibit will run through July 29, 2007. SnowWorld, developed at the University of Washington's Virtual Reality Research Center in collaboration with Harborview Burn Center and Imprint Interactive Technology, is the first immersive virtual world designed for reducing pain.

Delivering an engaging interactive experience during a wound care procedure, SnowWorld offers an interactive journey through an icy 3D canyon. The environment is populated with snowball wielding snowmen, flocks of squawking penguins, woolly mammoths, and other surprises. Patients are drawn into the action in SnowWorld, pelting anything they see with their own snowballs as they fly through the snow.

Dr. Hunter Hoffman, a cognitive psychologist and director of the University of Washington's Virtual Reality Research Center, comments: "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."

The Virtual Reality Research Center at the University of Washington is a unique, interdisciplinary research center known for pioneering medical applications of immersive virtual reality for treating pain, phobias, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Imprint Interactive Technology, Inc. designs and develops virtual reality systems and serious games for training, therapy, and medical research and is dedicated to helping people learn, work, and heal.