Almost since day one, immersive visualization has been deemed a killer application for Virtual Reality (VR) technology. Yet, despite a number of interesting research approaches, it has yet to make the jump to wide-spread use. The creation and deployment of immersive data analysis environments which actually provide an added value over their desktop-based cousins remains an active field of research.

In this talk I will give an overview of more than a decade of VR-based visualization research at RWTH Aachen University and its applications across multiple scientific domains. The examples will be arranged according to four main factors, which we consider key to the eventual adoption of VR-based visualization and data analysis, namely: interactivity, integration, usability, and utility.

Against the backdrop of a number of application case studies - carried out in close collaboration with domain scientists - I will discuss the use of immersive user interfaces for interactive visualization. Based on these success stories I will argue that the investment into large-scale VR installations is still justified and that there are still many interesting topics both in terms of research and application design.