Standard desktop setups, even with multiple monitor configurations, only provide a somewhat small view on the data set at hand. In addition, typical mouse and keyboard input paradigms often result in less user-friendly configurations, especially when it comes to dealing with 3D data sets. For simulation environments in which participants or users are supposed to be exposed to a more realistic scenario with increased immersion, desktop configurations, such as fishtank VR, are not necessarily a viable choice. This papers aims at providing an overview of different display technology and input devices that provides a virtual environment paradigm suitable for various different visualization and simulation tasks. The focus is on cost-effective display technology that does not break a researchers budget. The software framework utilizing these displays combines different visualization and graphics packages to create an easy-to-use software environment that can run readily on all these displays without changing the software thereby providing easy-to-use software frameworks for visualization and simulation.