Scientific Visualization Facilities

The Digital Worlds Institute

Andy QuayAssociate DirectorDigital Worlds InstituteUniversity of Florida

Digital Worlds Institute - Mission

EducationEducation(the (the DDigital igital AArts and rts and SSciences Program)ciences Program)

ResearchResearch(Augmented and (Augmented and VVirtual irtual EEnvironments, nvironments,

Distance Education, and Distance Education, and

Distributed Collaboration)Distributed Collaboration)

Scientific Visualization

Allows engineers, researchers, scientists or even the lay person to perform a variety of tasks related to scientific computing, including interactive rendering of time varying 2D or 3D data, data manipulation, 3D volume rendering, and 3D reconstruction.

Biology, Medicine, and Life Sciences Allows interactive

exploration of 3D imagery obtained from CT, MRI, ultrasound scanning, wide-field microscopy, or similar sources.

Current Facilities

NAVE - Non-expensive Automatic Virtual Environment multi-screen, multi-user, stereoscopic, multi-

sensory virtual environment large projected stereoscopic environment as

an alternative to head-mounted displays

NAVE - Equipment

Three 8’ wide screens angled at 120 degrees

Three stereo (3D) video projectors Stereo shutter glasses or polarized glasses 5.1 Surround Audio Display engines (PC and SGI) Other sensory effects (computer controlled

shakers, fans, colored lights) User input controller

NAVE – Room Configuration

NAVE – Front View

NAVE – Current Computing Resources SGI Onyx2

16 CPU’s(250 MHZ MIPS R10000)

Three InfiniteReality2E graphic pipes 4 GB main memory Terabyte fibre channel disk array Typically used in high-end Reality

Centers found in universities and industry

NAVE – Current Computing Resources Four Dell PC’s (8100)

P4 1.7 GHz NVIDIA GeForce2 Multiple audio cards

Pro-ConsumerA/V equipment

NAVE – Video Conferencing

The system also supports numerous video conferencing and collaboration technologies including the Access Grid

“Dancing Beyond Boundaries” was featured on CNN and won an award at SC2001.

Current & Potential NAVE Uses Museum and cultural exhibits Entertainment Virtual heritage (such as the history of UF) Art installations Multi-sensory experiments Visualization

Oil and gas planning Medicine Architecture Weather

Virtual movie/stage sets

Near-Future Facilities

5,000 sq ft facility Virtual Environment

Theater and Digital Production Studio

Located on UF campus

Brand new infrastructure

VE Theater

Digital Studio

Computing

Lobby

Office

Virtual Environment Theater

New Capabilities

Larger Screens - Three 17’ wide screens with future plans for a very large cylindrical screen

Brighter, higher resolution projectors Larger audience – 50 seats Better Audio – 10.2 Surround Sound Better Integration - Easily mix content from many

diverse sources on one system (VE, Teleconferencing, Movies, Graphics, etc)

Future plans for a network port and interactive controller in every seat