Electronic Visualization Laboratory University of Illinois at Chicago Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Ultra High Resolution Environments Ratko Jagodic Electronic Visualization Laboratory University of Illinois at Chicago

How to enable user interaction: The Question How to enable user interaction: For collocated and distributed collaboration Using large high-resolution displays With multiple applications rendered on remote supercomputing resources

Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment (SAGE) A specialized middleware for real-time streaming of extremely high-resolution graphics and high-definition video. The streams come from remote clusters to display walls over ultra high-speed networks Multiple applications Scalable Move, resize and overlap windows

Wall Display Interaction Capabilities Authoring and editing Direct interaction with remotely-rendered applications Editing various stages of the visualization pipeline Collaboration Multi-user interaction Tailor user interface to specific target sites Persistence Awareness and ownership Content organization Automatic layout Grouping of content Temporal organization

Authoring and Editing Direct Interaction Manager Manages physical interaction devices and overlays on the wall Basic window manipulations: move, resize, close Direct steering of remote applications: Move, drag, zoom, clicks Exploring maps, flying through 3D datasets Multiple heterogeneous devices

Physical Interaction Devices The problem: Speed vs. accuracy tradeoff Performance up close vs. afar Mouse Fantastic performance Often not appropriate Wiimote Fast, cheap, intuitive Not easy to set up, imprecise 6 DOF tracked wand Fast, intuitive Not easy to setup, expensive Gyromouse Cheap, decent performance, excellent operating range Some learning curve Trackballs, joysticks… Maybe a table for this???

Authoring and Editing SAGE Widgets A basic widget set for building application and wall interfaces Scalable Distributed Multi-user Customizable

Collaboration Multi-user interaction, distributed GUIs, scalability Sharing visualizations: Visualcasting Uses commodity clusters to provide a scalable way to broadcast real-time ultra-high-resolution content To scale up resolution or number of collaborators, you increase number of cluster nodes

Network-related interaction issues Collaboration Network-related interaction issues Latency Low latency video, audio and interaction for natural communication Streaming quality should automatically adapt to the available bandwidth Allocation of resources should be transparent Fault tolerance Network outages should result in rerouting of traffic

Experiences – Semester-long Class Very useful for juxtaposing visualizations for comparison Impractical to give everybody a Gyromouse, need a better solution SagePointer application – allows direct wall interaction from laptop Desktop sharing Drag and drop of multimedia files Content organization issues: Need faster/easier resize Need to be able to push windows to the back Bring multiple windows into focus Hiding windows

Content Organization More visible information More difficult to organize Productivity drops Can discourage users from trying out different arrangements Improvements: Media Browser Tiling modes Bring-to-focus, minimize, push-to-back Multi-object manipulations

Wall Interaction Video

Thank You For more info: www.sagecommons.org

Distributed Collaborative Visualization Traditional approach: multicasting Our approach: Visualcasting Uses commodity clusters to provide a scalable way to broadcast real-time ultra-high-resolution content To scale up resolution or number of collaborators, you increase number of cluster nodes. The visualcast management system coordinates the clusters

Experiences – Anatomy Study Session Clear benefits of high res Need different modes of interaction (desktop and direct) Display size and relative window positions matter Bringing multiple windows into focus Frequent focus switching

Direct Interaction Manager Manages physical interaction devices and overlays on the wall Window manipulations: Move, resize Events to apps: Move, drag, zoom, clicks

Wall Display User Interaction Challenges Users cannot be tied to a desk anymore Mouse and keyboard not appropriate anymore Wall displays aren’t personal anymore Multi-user interaction is imperative Wall displays vary in size Interfaces need to be scalable The environment is distributed Applications can be rendered remotely and displayed across any number of displays They allow much more information to be displayed Need better layout management techniques How do we build an interaction framework that allows us to study these issues?

SAGE Widgets A basic widget set for building application and wall interfaces Scalable Distributed Multi-user Customizable