Scientific Visualization Facilities The Digital Worlds Institute Andy Quay Associate Director Digital Worlds Institute University of Florida

Digital Worlds Institute - Mission Education (the Digital Arts and Sciences Program) Research (Augmented and Virtual Environments, Distance Education, and 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-Consumer A/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