Infrastructure

• NexCAVE: The NexCAVE was inspired by Calit2’s StarCAVE virtual reality environment and designed and developed by Calit2 Research Scientist Tom DeFanti, Virtual Reality Design Engineer Greg Dawe, Research Scientist Jürgen Schulze and Visualization Specialist Andrew Prudhomme. The Calit2 NexCAVE includes 10 JVC xpol (cross polarized) panels, arranged into 3-columns, and produces data resolution close to human visual acuity (defined as “20/20 vision”). The Calit2 NexCAVE has an effective resolution of 6,000x1,500 pixels per eye, while the full 21-panel, 7-column KAUST version has an effective resolution of 15,000x1,500 pixels per eye. The JVC HDTV xpol panels are very bright, which means that, unlike the StarCAVE, 3-D data in motion can be viewed under normal room light levels. The NexCAVE is powered by 5 Intel quad core Dell XPS computers running under ROCKS/CentOS, with dual Nvidia 285 graphics cards, with an additional XPS machine as the head node to control the rendering cluster. For user tracking and interaction, we use a wireless, optical tracking system by ART. It consists of two IR cameras and a Flystick2 3D joystick. We currently support two software environments to drive the NexCAVE: COVISE and CGLX.

• REVE: The Rapidly Expandable Virtual Environment (REVE) uses lenticular screens to present limited-depth auto-stereoscopic images to viewers without the use of any glasses. The REVE at Calit2 is made up of 6 tiled (3 panels x 2 panels) Alioscopy high-definition displays, where tiling the displays helps to make up for loss of resolution inherent in the auto-stereo presentation. The REVE multiplexes 8 views, and it has multiple "sweet spots", which makes it ideal for small group viewing. The REVE is powered by 4 HP XW8600 computers, which makes up the 3 nodes (each node runs two alioscopy displays, or one column) and 1 head node. Each node has 2 GTX280 NVIDIA graphics cards, and allocates one graphics card per display.

• SAGE Wall: Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment, or SAGE, is a graphics streaming architecture for supporting collaborative scientific visualization environments with potentially hundreds of megapixels of contiguous display resolution. The network-centered architecture of SAGE allows collaborators to simultaneously run various applications (such as 3D rendering, remote desktop, video streams and 2D maps) on local or remote clusters, and share them by streaming the pixels of each application over ultra-high-speed networks to large tiled displays (OptIPortals). The SAGE wall in the Virtulab is a 3x2 configuration of 52" NEC panels, with a resolution of 5760 x 2160 pixels. One machine, a 3rd party clone, runs the SAGE wall, with 3 G-Force NVIDIA 9800 GT graphics cards. Each graphics card runs two displays.

• CineGrid and ON*VECTOR Networking and 4K Experiments: The Virtulab is also a prime staging and testing environment for CineGrid and ON*VECTOR 4K networking experiments. The Virtulab utilizes 52" NEC flat panels and a JVC 4K projector. Data can also be moved to the Calit2 Auditorium for additional 4K testing.

• An NTT hardware codec, which can play back JPEG2000 compressed 4k video with multi-channel audio at 24 or 30 frames per second.
• A Zaxel video server with lossless compression to playback and record 4k video.
• A Dell XPS workstation with dual Nvidia Quadro 5600 graphics cards, which allows for real-time computer graphics in 4k. We use an Ascension Flock of Birds tracker with a Wanda input device on the show floor to interact with the virtual environment.

Other equipment used in the digital theater includes a digital light mixer, a conventional projector by Christie with a resolution of 1600x1200 pixels, and a remote control system by Crestron which allows presenters to connect their laptops and control video and audio directly from the podium.