News

October 31, 2010 - North County Times: County, UCSD collaborate to put cameras on Mount Woodson and Red Mountain
"Every bit of information we can get in real time will allow us to react more quickly and accurately," said California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection San Diego Chief Howard Windsor, who also oversees the county Fire Authority. "It's another tool for us to make decisions before we arrive at the scene, particularly when evacuations may be paramount. (Read More)

August 9, 2010 - Archaeology Undergrads Gain Research Experience Through Calit2, Faculty Mentor Program
Our team has scanned a 10-hectare area of Khirbat en-Nahas down to the millimeter level, collecting 1.75 billion data points (complete with coordinates and color values) to create a robust 3D model of the site. This data was then combined with GIS data pertaining to various artifacts so that users could see those artifacts in their original environment, and in three dimensions using our advanced virtual reality display technology while providing a unique training environments for our undergraduates in the field as well as back home. (Read More)

August 4, 2010 - NSF Funds UC San Diego Program in Engineering to Preserve Cultural Treasures
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has given the green light for a UC San Diego-based project for Training, Research and Education in Engineering for Cultural Heritage Diagnostics (TEECH) and our lab will be right in the middle of it. This project will provide a unique opportunity to undertake interdisciplinary research and education in a field that is at once very new and very old: developing advanced imaging, information and visualization technologies to diagnose, monitor and safeguard great works of art, historic monuments and archaeological artifacts. Funding for the project could reach $3.2 million over five years from NSF’s Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program. (Read More)

July 8, 2010 - Grad Students Show Off Engineering Design Skills / GRAVITY Project Takes First Place
Calit2 UCSD is a longtime supporter of both ECE 291 and the corresponding undergraduate group engineering design course (ECE 191). Seven of this quarter's eight ECE 291 projects were sponsored by Calit2, including the winning project for the quarter, John Kooker's "OptiActor for iPad" project coming out of our lab, in which he created a seamlessly integrated, intuitive, remote interface for Calit2's HIPerSpace-OptiPortal system, based on the newly released iPad device (released to the public on April 3, 2010). Kooker was mentored by Kuester, who is also the director of Calit2's Center of Graphics, Visualization and Virtual Reality (GRAVITY) laboratory and Kai-Uwe Dörr, Calit2 project scientist. He also worked closely with Kevin Ponto of the GRAVITY lab. Calit2's HIPerSpace-OptiPortal system is a scalable, multi-display, high performance visualization system that uses cluster technology to support interactive visualization. (Read More)

July 7, 2010 - UC San Diego Team Spearheads $25 Million Project to Improve Human-Systems Interactions
Under this five-year contract, UC San Diego and its partners will work with an Army Research Laboratory (ARL) group at Aberdeen, Maryland, to develop and demonstrate basic cognitive neuroscience principles guiding development of improved human-systems interactions in complex information environments. The goals of the alliance are to optimize information transfer between operators and advanced communication and control systems; to facilitate decision-making in complex, high-risk environments; and to implement advanced tools and techniques to perform individualized physiological and behavioral assessment in operational contexts -- for example, while interacting with complex information displays in advanced robotic vehicles. Stay tuned for some mind-boggling data visualization concepts coming out of GRAVITY. (Read More)

May 19, 2010 - Mixed Virtual/Physical Collaboration Spaces at Calit2: Collapsing the 'Flat' World to a Single Point
When air travel ground to an ashen halt in Europe following Iceland's recent volcanic eruption, The New York Times reported that the videoconferencing industry — which makes it possible to communicate with counterparts thousands of miles away while sticking close to home – saw a significant spike in sales. But long before the ash cloud hampered travel, UC San Diego researchers in the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) were using and developing cutting-edge systems to push videoconferencing into the next generation of so-called mixed virtual/physical technologies. (Read More)

May 18, 2010 - UC San Diego Alumnus and CISA3 Researcher Named National Geographic Emerging Explorer
Fourteen visionary, young trailblazers from around the world — including University of California, San Diego alumnus Albert Yu-Min Lin, ’04, M.S. ’06, Ph.D. ’08 — have been named to the 2010 class of National Geographic Emerging Explorers. The new Emerging Explorers are introduced in the June issue of National Geographic magazine. (Read More)

April 20, 2010 - National Geographic Taps UC San Diego Students for Technology Solutions
UC San Diego and the National Geographic Society have created the UCSD-NGS Engineers for Exploration program for graduate and undergraduate students to develop technology solutions for National Geographic explorers and expeditions. To facilitate the multi-departmental and multi-institutional relationship, the program will be managed by our Center of Interdisciplinary Science for Art, Architecture and Archaeology (CISA3) within the UCSD division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2). (Read More)

April 5, 2010 - UC San Diego Technology Institute Forges Research Partnership with Saudi Institutions
The University of California, San Diego has signed an initially three-year agreement with Saudi Arabia's national science agency and national laboratories King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), and Saudi Telecom Company (STC) to collaborate on the development of information technology systems and advanced communications. Research conducted in our lab will have a pivotal role in this exciting new collaboration. (Read More)

March 23, 2010 - "VirtualizeMe: Real-time Avatar Creation for Tele-Immersion Environments" poster presentation at IEEE VR 2010
Daniel Knoblauch presented a poster "VirtualizeMe: Real-time Avatar Creation for Tele-Immersion Environments" at IEEE VR 2010 in Waltham, MA, USA. (Read More)

December 4, 2009 - ISVC Publication: "Focused Volumetric Visual Hull with Color Extraction."
A new volumetric visual hull approach for Tele-Immersion avatar reconstruction is introduced. The current reference for this paper is: Knoblauch, D. and Kuester, F. (2009). Focused Volumetric Visual Hull with Color Extraction. In Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Visual Computing (ISVC'09). (Read More)

December 4, 2009 - ISVC Publication: "Factorization of correspondence and camera error for unconstrained dense correspondence applications."
A new approach for factorization of correspondence and camera error for unconstrained dense correspondence applications. The current reference for this paper is: Knoblauch, D., Hess-Flores, M., Duchaineau, M. and Kuester, F. (2009). Factorization of correspondence and camera error for unconstrained dense correspondence applications. In Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Visual Computing (ISVC'09). (Read More)

December 3, 2009 - EDUCAUSE: IT and the Greener Future, prominently features our HIPerSpace technology
In the November-December 2009 issue of the journal EDUCAUSE Review, senior information-technology researchers from California and Canada make a strong plea for colleges and universities to take the lead in finding solutions to what President Obama's science advisor calls 'global climatic disruption.' Publication of the cover story, “Campuses as Living Laboratories for the Greener Future,” coincided with a joint keynote address two of its authors: Larry Smarr, Director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2);, and Bill St. Arnaud, Chief Research Officer of Canada’s CANARIE, Inc., Canada’s high performance research and education network. The keynote took place in early November at EDUCAUSE’s 2009 annual conference in Denver. EDUCAUSE is a nonprofit association and the foremost community of IT leaders and professionals committed to advancing higher education. (Read more)

November 30, 2009 - H.M. recollected: Famous amnesic launches a bold, new brain project at UCSD - San Diego Union Tribune, Prominently Features HIPerSpace
As best he could remember, Henry Gustav Molaison never visited San Diego, spending his entire life on the East Coast. When he died late last year at the age of 82, Molaison was a man almost entirely unknown except by his initials H.M. and the fact that experimental brain surgery had erased his ability to form new memories. He forgot names, places, events and faces almost immediately. Half an hour after lunch, he couldn’t recall what he had eaten, or that he had eaten at all. His face in the mirror was a constant surprise because he remembered only what he looked like as a young man. Every question was new, even those asked just minutes before. (Read more)

November 30, 2009 - UC San Diego’s ‘Brain Observatory’ to Examine Brain of HM: World’s Most Famous Amnesiac
The brain of one of the most famous patients in the history of neuroscience is going back under the knife…and scientists and students around the world can have a front-row seat ... Thanks to our HIPerSpace technology research teams now can also intuitively and interactively study the ultra-high resolution imagery being collected within visualization environments operating at the human perception threshold. (Read more)

November 17, 2009 - The UCSD Brain Observatory Adopts HIPerSpace Technology
The Brain Observatory at UCSD has adopted HIPerSpace Technology to support the analysis of massive collections of brain slices being acquired with a new generation of imaging systems that were recently deployed and are now being used to study the brain of HM, who became the world's most famous amnesic patient. HIPerSpace technology provides the unique ability for the deployment of remote observatories, allowing distributed research teams to collaborate on the analysis of large-scale scientific data. (The Brain Observatory)

November 24, 2009 - French Weekly Magazine Features CISA3's Search for Lost Leonardo da Vinci Mural
The French weekly newsmagazine, Le Point, profiles the work of CISA3 Director Maurizio Seracini and his team as they search for a Leonardo da Vinci mural not seen in 450 years. Written by Dominique Dunglas, the four-page feature article appeared in the Society section of the magazine's November 19 edition. The first paragraphs (translated by CISA3) read as follows: A masterpiece of Leonardo da Vinci, a philosophical touchstone of the Renaissance whose contemporaries baptized as "the school of the world", The Battle of Anghiari is perhaps there, in front of us, eight meters up the eastern wall of the Hall of the 500 in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. Present but invisible, a prisoner of the darkness behind the brick wall that made it disappear in the middle of the 16th century. (Read More)

October 28, 2009 - DiamondExchange Senior Executives Seek Data Solutions on Tour of Calit2
On a mission to make "data more digestible," members of the DiamondExchange — a senior executive program that helps business leaders leverage technology for competitive advantage — visited the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) at the University of California, San Diego, earlier this month to tour the institute's world-class data visualization and telepresence techniques. ponsored by the global consulting firm Diamond Management & Technology Consultants, Inc., the DiamondExchange is limited to general managers and other top officers of large-scale, growth oriented companies. Membership is by invitation only. Since its founding 13 years ago, the Diamond Exchange has attracted senior executives from a number of leading companies, including America Online, Coca-Cola Enterprises, Hewlett-Packard, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, McDonalds, Microsoft and Pfizer. (Read More)

October 26, 2009 - Disaster Preparedness: Disaster Volunteerism
HIPerSpace is prominently featured on UCTV's special about Disaster Preparedness: Disaster Volunteerism. A great example of the digital signage and media wall potential of the technology being developed by our team. (UCTV Video)

October 19, 2009 - Disaster Preparedness: Pandemic Influenza and Emerging Infection
HIPerSpace is prominently featured on UCTV's special about Disaster Preparedness: Pandemic Influenza and Emerging Infections. A great example of the digital signage and media wall potential of the technology being developed by our team. (UCTV Video)

October 12, 2009 - Disaster Preparedness: Chemical and Biological Agents
HIPerSpace is prominently featured on UCTV's special about Disaster Preparedness: Chemical and Biological Agents. A great example of the digital signage and media wall potential of the technology being developed by our team. (UCTV Video)

October 5, 2009 - Disaster Preparedness: Natural Disasters
HIPerSpace is prominently featured on UCTV's special about Disaster Preparedness: Natural Disasters. A great example of the digital signage and media wall potential of the technology being developed by our team. (UCTV Video)

September 1, 2009 - Journal article comparing Airborne and Terrestrial based LIDAR to be published
A comparison study of the application airborne and terrestrial based LIDAR is accepted for publication in the ASPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. The current reference for this article is: Young, A.P., Olsen, M.J., Driscoll, N., Gutierrez, R., Guza, R.T., Flick, R.E., Johnstone, E., and Kuester, F(In Press). "Comparing Airborne and Terrestrial Lidar Approaches to Assess Seacliff Erosion in Southern California." To be published in the ASPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. (ASPRS)

September 1, 2009 - Journal article about new survey methods for the Coastal Bluff Erosion Monitoring and Modeling Project to be published
New survey methods and optimizations are discussed in a new article in the ASCE Journal of Surveying Engineering to be published November 1, 2009. The reference for this article is: Olsen, M.J., Johnstone, E., Driscoll, N., Ashford, S.A., and Kuester, F. (2009). "Terrestrial Laser Scanning of Extended Cliff Sections in Dynamic Environments: A Parameter Analysis." ASCE J. of Surveying Eng., 134(4). ([TBA])

September 1, 2009 - Journal article about Terrestrial Laser Scanning Structural Analysis to be published
3D laser scanning applied to understanding structural damage during and earthquake will be published in the ASCE Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering. The reference for this article is: Olsen, M.J., Kuester, F., Chang, B.J., and Hutchinson, T.C. (2009). "Terrestrial Laser Scanning-Based Structural Damage Assessment." ASCE J. of Computing in Civil Eng. (PDF ahead of print)

August 14, 2009 - NexCAVE - The Next Generation of CAVE Technolgoy
Our Calit2 Visualization Team Develops 3-D Technology from Modified HDTV LCD Screens. The technology, dubbed "NexCAVE," was developed for Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), which established a special partnership with our visualization team at UC San Diego last year. (Read More)

August 13, 2009 - Calit2 Technology Partnership Receives Recognition from U.S. Housing & Urban Development
Officials from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) visited the San Diego Town & Country Learning Center (TCLC) as part of Neighborhood Networks Week, a celebration of HUD's Multifamily Neighborhood Networks centers throughout the United States. The TCLC — which features our HIPerSpace technology — was featured in Neighborhood Networks Week's closing Webcast, broadcast live on location. (Read More)

May 26-31, 2009 - Optiportal - Centrepiece for ActewAGL’s Amazing World of Science
A 4x5 OptIPortal was shown at the 2009 Australian Science Festival. The system is powered by HIPerSpace technology and our CGLX software stack. Quote "Get ready to blast off as you witness space in a whole new world of technology". (Read More)

April 22, 2009 - UC Davis Genome Center installs HIPerSpace Technology
The Genome Center at the University of California Davis (UCD), has installed a 4x3 (12 tile) display wall adopting our HIPerSpace technology and its CGLX software stack. This newly deployed OptIPortal delivers a combined 48 megapixels worth of display real-estate that will be used by faculty, researchers and students in the UCD Bioinformatics Core. (Read More)

April 17, 2009 - 'Cosmic Tree of Life' on HIPerSpace Wall
The closest that artist Roger Ferragallo has come to displaying the full dimensions of his "Cosmic Tree of Life" digital painting was when he got the chance to display the latest version (2.0) of the art work on Calit2's HIPerSpace tiled display wall at UC San Diego recently. The digital painting measures 556 million pixels, and it was displayed on HIPerSpace's native 287 million pixelsl. If ever "Cosmic Tree of Life" is printed out in its current incarnation, the painting would measure 25 x 15 feet, so HIPerSpace permitted Ferragallo to see the full scope of his work on the tiled display system which measures 31.8 x 7.9 feet. In a video posted on YouTube, Ferragallo talks about displaying and interacting with his work on the HIPerSpace wall. "Cosmic Tree of Life" is also being exhibited online and interactively at GigaPan.com, a project by Carnegie Mellon University with partners, Google Earth, NASA Ames and National Geographic, for displaying panoramic images online. (Read More)

March 3, 2009 - Coastal Bluff Imaging Study Featured in SIO Explorations
Researchers from UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Jacob School of Engineering are studying California's coastline to understand how sand from sea cliffs contributes to San Diego's world-famous beaches. "This is the one we have been waiting for," said Scripps researcher Liz Johnstone after arriving at a bluff section at Flat Rock, a popular area for beachgoers at Torrey Pines State Park, that collapsed in September 2008. A 75-foot section of unstable bluff dumped 1,000 tons of sand onto the beach below in the collapse. The section that came tumbling down was from a 45- to 48-million-year old sandstone formation and was one of several collapses along that same stretch of beach in the state park. (Read More)

February 12, 2009 - NASA Lunar Science Institute installs HIPerSpace Technology
The NASA Lunar Science Institute (LSI) has installed a 3x3 (9 tile) display wall adopting our HIPerSpace technology and its CGLX software stack. This newly deployed OptIPortal delivers a combined 36 megapixels worth of display real-estate that will be used by NASA LSI researchers to study lunar data and NASA researchers in general for a broad set of visualization challenges. (Read More)

January 9, 2009 - DOE Awards Supercomputing Grant for Extreme Visualization of Cultural Patterns
High-performance computing and the humanities are connecting at the University of California, San Diego - with a little matchmaking help from the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Visual arts professor Lev Manovich talks about the cultural analytics project, and why Calit2's HIPerSpace ultra-high-resolution display wall is part of the research project. The two agencies have awarded 330,000 hours of time on DOE supercomputers to UC San Diego’s Software Studies Initiative (softwarestudies.com) to explore the full potential of cultural analytics in a project on “Visualizing Patterns in Databases of Cultural Images and Video.” The grant is one of three inaugural awards from a new Humanities High Performance Computing Program established jointly by DOE and NEH. (Read More)

November 11, 2008 - Article features Michael Olsen and our Coastal Bluff Erosion Monitoring and Modeling Project
The cliffs along the San Diego coastline are more than just fodder for picture postcards; a number of residential homes sit perched atop them, and in certain areas, the railroad tracks that serve Amtrak and County Coaster come within several feet of the cliff edge. But coastal erosion is changing the landscape of Southern California's beaches, and a team of researchers from UC San Diego is seeking to better understand how waves, groundwater sapping, and sea-level rise are contributing to the gradual eating-away of the beachfront cliffs that line the 20 kilometers between La Jolla and Encinitas. (Read More)

November 1, 2008 - CGLX is Powering Major Multi-Tile Display Systems at SC08.
CGLX is powering a significant number of multi-tile display systems (OptIPortals) at SC08 this year, showcasing visual analytics applications developed by our group, including TiffViewer, MediaViewer and VideoBlaster as well as real-time GPU centric scientific visualization research. Look out for a collection of exciting performance presentations. (Read More)

October 31, 2008 - Researchers Look Into the Past with High-Resolution Digital Scans of Italy's Palazzo Medici
The Palazzo Medici, one of most significant landmarks of the Italian Renaissance, has always been something of a touchstone — it was completed in 1460 for the wealthy Medici family and later served as the model for Florence's more ornate Pitti and Strozzi palaces. It's fitting, then, that the palace (now called the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi) has also become a prototype for researchers pursuing high-resolution digital cultural forensics, a field being pioneered by scientists at UC San Diego's Center of Interdisciplinary Science for Art, Architecture and Archaeology (CISA3). (Read More)

October 29, 2008 - High-Tech Search for Legendary Warlord Utilizing HIPerSpace Technology
Somewhere beneath the wind-swept deserts of Mongolia lies the body of one of the most enigmatic warlords in history, a ruthless but brilliant leader who united his people and built the largest empire in the world. Nearly 800 years after Genghis Khan died, the legends continue to grow, as do the mysteries. Now, a young scientist at the University of California, San Diego, is hoping to succeed, where others have failed, and answer a question that has puzzled historians for centuries: Where, precisely, is the tomb of Genghis Khan? (Read More)

October 27, 2008 - Queensland Cyber Infrastructure Foundation Adopts HIPerSpace Technology for Education
At the recent Digital Education in Action conference held at the John Paul College in Brisbane, AARNet and QCIF constructed the OptIPortal to demonstrate its capabilities to the schools sector. As a significant part of the Digital Education Revolution initiative, the Australian Government is investing $1.1 billion over five years to provide for new or upgraded information and communications technology (ICT) for secondary schools with students in years 9 to 12; with a focus on student computer ratios. This program provides the an opportunity for schools to use a portion of that investment to develop their own OptIPortal and the conference provided a good opportunity to demonstrate its capabilities and potential. The availability of ultra high resolution content is a challenge to a broader appreciation of the OptIPortal, as such the development of a ultra high resolution content bank that is aligned with a schools curriculum would be a worthy project. The OptIPortal generated enormous interest from the students. (Read More)

October 15, 2008 - Researcher Hopes to Find Hidden Tomb of Genghis Khan Using Non-Invasive Technologies
According to legend, Genghis Khan lies buried somewhere beneath the dusty steppe of Northeastern Mongolia, entombed in a spot so secretive that anyone who made the mistake of encountering his funeral procession was executed on the spot. Once he was below ground, his men brought in horses to trample evidence of his grave, and just to be absolutely sure he would never be found, they diverted a river to flow over their leader's final resting place. What Khan and his followers could not have envisioned was that nearly 800 years after his death, scientists at UC San Diego's Center for Interdisciplinary Science in Art, Architecture and Archaeology (CISA3) would be able to locate his tomb using advanced visualization technologies being developed by our team. (Read More)

October 14, 2008 - Calit2 & KAUST are Partnering to Create World-Class Visualization and Virtual Reality Research and Training Activities
King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) and the University of California, San Diego today announced a special partnership to collaborate on world-class visualization and virtual reality research and training activities. The Geometric Modeling and Scientific Visualization Research Center (GM&SVRC) is expected to enhance research in areas ranging from solar power to clean water and new medicines. Under the four-year agreement, the UC San Diego division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) will provide expertise in visualization, virtual-reality and collaboration tools to support KAUST’s ambitious plan to deploy state-of-the-art technologies for scientific research. (Read More)

October 14, 2008 - The Extension to the San Diego Supercomputer Center is Dedicated and with it a new OptIPortal Powered by our HIPerSpace Technology.
The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) opens its new extension and with it launches a new OptIPortal, connected to the NSF TeraGrid via the OptIPuter, an optical network device developed by UC San Diego's California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2). OptIPuter is widely viewed by high-performance supercomputing experts and users as a key step in creating a computer cyberinfrastructure, by allowing end-users to discover, reserve, and integrate remote computers, storage, and instruments. The new 80 megapixel resolution OptIPortal is based on our HIPerSpace hardware and software stack ( CGLX) and visual analytics tools. It is being used by Michael Norman, SDSC's Chief Scientific Officer and UC San Diego professor of physics. Installed in Norman's Laboratory for Computational Astrophysics and being used to visualize results from his cosmology simulations on the cutting edge petascale machines linked to SDSC through NSF's TeraGrid. (Read More)

October 8, 2008 - The Cross-Platform Cluster Graphics Library (CGLX v1.2.2) was Released With Major Enhancements
The Cross-Platform Cluster Graphic Library (CGLX) Version 1.2.2 Salamander, is now available with major enhancements, including compatibility with the latest Linux distribution and ROCKS 5, a scriptable interface, inter-wall communication, VideoBlaster 2.0 with audio support, fully synchronized capabilities between MAC OS X and Linux, extended API and integrated in-depth documentation. Community feedback about the thoroughly documented CGLX multi-tile development API and knowledge base, assisting with the trouble-shooting of multi-tile display environments and graphics clusters has been overwhelmingly positive. (Read More)

October 6, 2008 - Our HIPerWall Technology and Related Research are a Centerpiece in UC Irvine's Shaping the Future Video
UC Irvine recently released a "Shaping the Future" video showcasing the research, researchers and most of all current and future research, envisioned to shape the future. Our HIPerWall research is a core theme of this video and even though our visualization team has long moved to UCSD, its legacy is carrying on strong, which is exciting to see. (Video)

September 20, 2008 - Space and HIPerSpace: Mars Rover's Rendezvous with Calit2 Display
After Professor Kuester came up with the ingenious name for his tiled-display-on-steroids, dubbing it the HIPerSpace system, it was probably only a matter of time before it would become a window on U.S. space exploration. And that's what happened this week when two NASA engineers, in San Diego for a conference, opted to participate in a Mars Rover sortie while watching incoming images from the Rover and a NASA control room -- all displayed on Calit2's 286-million-pixel HIPerSpace display at UCSD. (Read More)

September 17, 2008 - 3D Virtual Reality Environment Developed at UC San Diego Helps Scientists Innovate
Its name sounds like something out of science fiction, but the StarCAVE at the University of California, San Diego is now a science fact. The virtual-reality environment allows groups of scientists to venture into worlds as small as nanoparticles and as big as the cosmos - permitting new insights that could fuel discoveries in many fields. Early users of the StarCAVE include UC San Diego researchers in biomedicine, neuroscience, structural engineering, archaeology, earth science, genomics, art history and other disciplines. The StarCAVE is a five-sided virtual reality (VR) room where scientific models and animations are projected in stereo on 360-degree screens surrounding the viewer, and onto the floor as well. It was constructed by the UC San Diego division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2). At less than $1 million, the StarCAVE immersive environment cost approximately the same as earlier VR systems, while offering much higher resolution and contrast. (Read More)

September 16, 2008 - Larry Smarr blogs about HIPerVerse on Calit2Life
In a breakthrough demonstration yesterday, as part of CENIC's CalREN-XD/HPR workshop [www.cenic.org/workshop/] held at Calit2 at UCSD, two research groups at UCI and UCSD momentarily created the world's largest virtual OptIPortal. Using two dedicated one gigabit per second optical links, provided by CENIC as part of the persistent Calit2 OptIPuter, the two HiPerSpace tiled walls at Calit2@UCSD and Calit2@UCI were united into a 124 tile HiPerVerse exceeding 1/2 billion pixels. (Read More)

September 15, 2008 - HIPerVerse Breaks 1/2 Gigapixel Barrier During CalREN-XD/High Performance Research Workshop
One of the demonstrations during this year's CalREN High-Performance Research Workshop involved real-time applications running on dual 1Gbps lightpaths between Calit2's divisions at UC San Diego and UC Irvine. Our team demonstrated the prototype for a prototype system that we call the "HIPerVerse". The technology allows two of the world's highest-resolution, distributed visualization systems - the HIPerSpace display in San Diego and the HIPerWall in Irvine - which were both developed by our team, to be interconnected into ultra-resolution environments at the pixel level. (Read More)

September 8, 2008 - Intel Donates 200 Microprocessors to Promote our Visualization Research
In a gesture of support for the "extreme visualization" research being done by the UC San Diego division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), Intel Corporation has donated 200 quad-core microprocessors to Calit2's Falko Kuester, professor of visualization and virtual reality. Falko Kuester, Calit2's Professor for Visualization and Virtual Reality, has received a donation of 200 quad-core microprocessors from Intel. "We've long moved away from just processing and viewing the data to visual analytics," explained Prof. Kuester. "If you have a problem and you need to solve it, you have to be able to dissect your data interactively at many scales and dimensions. The Intel microprocessors contain four individual computational cores and can do extremely fast processing in parallel using fairly high-frequency microchips. This is the bandwidth that we need for the type of computation we're doing." (Read More)

September 2, 2008 - Structural Engineers and Computer Scientists Hope to Integrate Disciplines to Revolutionize Building Construction
Despite the breathtaking evolution of computer science over the past 30 years, structural engineering — hindered by a reluctance to adapt to digital innovations — has remained relatively unchanged as a discipline. With this in mind, a group of UC San Diego engineers and computer scientists, together with their counterparts at Germany's Bauhaus University of Weimar, are hoping to completely reform the way buildings are constructed by integrating the two fields and bringing data visualization and online collaboration to the fore of structural design. (Read More)

August 25, 2008 - Our group takes center stage at NVISION 2008 with the OptIPortable (HIPerSpace Nano)
Our team is at NVISION 2008 in San Jose, CA, showing Calit2's ultra-high resolution, multi-tile visualization research. Calit2 took center stage with the OptIPortable (HIPerSpace Nano) placed in the atrium of the San Jose Convention Center, with every visitor coming to the workshop or exhibit passing by the OptIPortable display at least twice each day. There was a lot of excitement about 'portable' high-performance graphics and wearable devices, triggering the HIPerSpace Nano label in conjunction with OptIPortable at the last minute, to relate to the somewhat younger gaming crowd -- which it did. (Read More)

August 14, 2008 - CGLX Now Downloaded over 4,000 Times and Driving Nearly all Major Multi-Tile Systems (OptIPortals).
CGLX has enjoyed tremendous popularity in academia and is now installed on nearly all large-scale multi-tile OptIPortal-type systems. Since this is a relatively small portion when compared to the overall download volume, there must be quite a few happy multi-tile users out there or developers that are experimenting with CGLX's simulation mode, allowing arbitrary tile configurations to be explored in even single display configurations. (Read More)

June 26, 2008 - The Cross-Platform Cluster Graphics Library (CGLX v1.2.1) Now Available Packaged for Mac-OS X
The Cross-Platform Cluster Graphic Library (CGLX) is now available as a package for Mac-OS X bringing the full set of CGLX capabilities and a collection of CGLX-based applications to the Mac. All you will have to do is to download and install the dmg and you are ready to go. (Read More)

July 10, 2008 - UK News Service Says, 'Now That's a Big TV'
A number of international reporters have been inquiring about Calit2's HIPerSpace, unveiled this week in all its 286 million pixels of glory. Marc Chacksfield of Britain's TechRadar online service calls HIPerSpace the "highest-resolution display systems for scientific visualisation in the world." (If you look closely at the words below the photo on TechRadar, the caption reads: "Now that's a big TV.") The writer ends his article with some dry humor: "And what are they displaying on the, er, display. Well, it's certainly not re-runs of Hollyoaks, more footage from the National Geographic and the like." Ironically, and apparently unknown to Chacksfield, the very first group treated to a demo of HIPerSpace and what it can do was a delegation from National Geographic! (And if you're wondering what Hollyoaks means, it's a long-running soap opera on Britain's Channel 4.) (Read More)

July 9, 2008 - UC San Diego Unveils World’s Highest-Resolution Scientific Display System
As the size of complex scientific data sets grows exponentially, so does the need for scientists to explore the data visually and collaboratively in ultra-high resolution environments. To that end, we just unveiled the highest-resolution display system for scientific visualization in the world. The Highly Interactive Parallelized Display Space (HIPerSpace) features nearly 287 million pixels of screen resolution – more than one active pixel for every U.S. citizen, based on the 2000 Census. Calit2’s expanded HIPerSpace is an ultra-scale visualization environment developed on a multi-tile paradigm. The system features 70 high-resolution Dell 30” displays, arranged in fourteen columns of five displays each. Each 'tile' has a resolution of 2,560 by 1,600 pixels – bringing the combined, visible resolution to 35,640 by 8,000 pixels, or more than 286.7 million pixels in all. By using larger, high-resolution tiles, we also have minimized the amount of space taken up by the frames, or bezels, of each display. Bezels will eventually disappear, but until then, we can reduce their distraction by keeping the highest possible ratio of screen area to each tile’s bezel. Including the pixels hidden behind the bevels of each display, which give the "French door" appearance, the effective total image size is 348 million pixels. ([|Read More])

June 12, 2008 - HIPerSpace Fully Operational at 286,720,000 Pixels Resolution
HIPerSpace has been transitioned into its new home and has in the process grown to an amazing 286,720,000 pixels resolutions, further increasing its research impact and charting the course for next-generation collaborative digital workspaces. HIPerSpace research and application domains now span earth system science, seismology, structural engineering, forensic engineering, remote sensing, cultural heritage diagnostics, emergency management and response, neuroscience, genetics, art, architecture, archeology, edutainment and entertainment, to name a few. (Read More)

June 1, 2008 - The Cross-Platform Cluster Graphics Library (CGLX v1.2.1) is now available as a roll for ROCKS (HIPerRoll)
The Cross-Platform Cluster Graphic Library (CGLX) is now available as a roll for ROCKS. CGLX is a flexible, high-performance OpenGL-based graphics framework for the development of distributed high performance visualization systems such as OptIPortals. CGLX allows OpenGL programs to transparently scale across display clusters and fully leverage the available resources, while maximizing the achievable performance and resolution of such systems. (Read More)

April 22, 2008 - Our research about the Search for the Lost Leonardo is featured on CBS 60 Minutes
The most-watched news program on American television showcased the work of Calit2 researcher Maurizio Seracini in its April 20 edition. In a segment called "The Lost Leonardo", correspondent Morley Safer recounted the UC San Diego researcher's 33-year-old quest to locate the long-lost Leonardo da Vinci mural, "The Battle of Anghiari" - a search to solve what CBS termed one of the most enduring mysteries of the art world (Video). (Read More)

Match 10, 2008 - The National Geographic Society and the City of Florence team up in support of the DaVinci Project
The UC San Diego-based center that is leading the scientific search for a long-lost Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece has a new partner in the effort: the venerable National Geographic Society. The city of Florence announced this week a five-year agreement with the Society to explore the history and culture of Florence in the pages of National Geographic magazine and books, and the National Geographic Channel on TV. The initial collaboration brings National Geographic into the search for the Battle of Anghiari, a mural painted by da Vinci that disappeared nearly 500 years ago, but is believed to exist behind a brick wall and fresco in the Palazzo Vecchio. (Read More)

January 16, 2008 - Calit2 and University of Melbourne Initiate Australia's Ultra-Resolution Global Collaboration Laboratory
Members of the Australian American Leadership Dialogue (AALD) meeting at Calit2 in San Diego were linked over a super-broadband network to the University of Melbourne's new OptIPortal tiled wall display (based on technology first developed by the Calit2-led OptIPuter project). Australia's Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Victorian Premier John Brumby today joined politicians, industry, science and media representatives – on both sides of the Pacific – to experience a powerful, next generation ultra-resolution visualization carried over the super-broadband network linking the University of Melbourne and the UCSD division of Calit2. The OziPortal being presented was based entirely on our HIPerSpace hardware and software stack, including CGLX, TiffViewer, MediaViewer, VideoBlaster and VideoSender. (Read More)

January 11, 2008 - UC San Diego Researchers Acquire Data on Renaissance Landmark in Search for da Vinci Mural
When most tourists visit Florence's famed Palazzo Vecchio, they are ushered off the premises in early evening. But for UCSD graduate students Michael Olsen and Daniel Knoblauch, the museum's closing time was when their real work began. Together with professor Falko Kuester, they spent nearly three weeks in November and December scanning the interior of the historic building's stately Hall of the 500, mostly in the dark. "It was a great opportunity to work in an area where important Renaissance artists worked and so much history happened." (Read More)

August 8, 2006 - Professor Kuester gives invited talk at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC)
Professor Kuester talks about "Massive Data Visualization using Extreme-Scale Visualization Systems" in the Scientific Computing Track at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC). The talk goes over the motivation, technical needs and research contributions of HIPerWall, a system that he conceived in 2003 and that him and his team have been developing since. The talk is available through WWDC'06 Session Videos on iTunes. (Read More)

April 16, 2006 - HIPerWall: New Vistas in Scientific Visualization (Apple Profiles our HIPerWall research)
As advanced computer and imaging technologies generate more and larger data sets, the capacity to visualize and interpret that data becomes problematic. To promote new scientific visualization research, the National Science Foundation provided Major Research Instrument funding to develop the HIPerWall visualization system. At 200 megapixels, HIPerWall provides twice the resolution of any other display in the world and approximately ten times the resolution of typical tiled displays. (Read More)