university of illinois at chicago cavern the cave research network maxine d. brown electronic...

University of Illinois at Chicago

CAVERNThe CAVE Research Network

Maxine D. Brown

Electronic Visualization Laboratory


CAVE Research and Development

1992—Prototype CAVE

1993—10’x10’x10’ CAVE

1994—SIGGRAPH VROOM

1995—I-WAY at SC’95

1997—100 CAVES and derivatives worldwide

1997-8—NSF funding for CAVERN and new desktop VR devices for the Grid, STAR TAP and NCSA


Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL)

• 25 years at UIC• Joint program: EECS and Art & Design• 2 directors and 12 associated faculty• 10 staff• 50 graduate students (27 EVL supported)• Long-time application collaborations

– National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)

– Argonne National Laboratory– Building the Grid together


EVL Computing and Networking Facilities

• 4 CAVE-sized Onyx rack computers

• 2 CAVEs, 8 ImmersaDesks, many workstations, at EVL and allied UI labs

• OC-3 networking to MREN, vBNS, and STAR TAP

• Access to the Grid: Very large SP2s, SGI’s at Argonne and NCSA and >100 CAVEs and ImmersaDesks worldwide


The Grid:Blueprint for a New Computing Infrastructure

I. Foster, C. Kesselman (Eds), Morgan Kaufmann, 1999

• ISBN 1-55860-475-8 • 22 chapters by expert

authors including Andrew Chien, Jack Dongarra, Tom DeFanti, Andrew Grimshaw, Roch Guerin, Ken Kennedy, Paul Messina, Cliff Neuman, Jon Postel, Larry Smarr, Rick Stevens, and many others

http://www.mkp.com/grids

“A source book for the historyof the future” -- Vint Cerf


Midwest Networked CAVE and ImmersaDesk Sites

UIC-Chicago

UIUC-Urbana

Argonne NL

U Wisconsin

U Michigan

Indiana U

U Iowa

Iowa State

U Minnesota

U of Chicago


NCSA Partners Connected by the vBNS


STAR TAP:Science Technology And Research Transit Access Point

Source: http://www.startap.net/topology.html

Japan

Korea

Singapore

Taiwan

Australia

France

Iceland

Sweden

Denmark

Norway

Finland

Netherlands

Israel

Russia

CERN

Canada

The Persistent Interconnect for NGI, Internet2, International High-Performance Networks


CAVERN

• CAVE Research Network (CAVERN)

• CAVE Research Network User’s Society (CAVERNUS)

Networks not only facilitate but seem to mandate partnerships


Tele-Immersion

– Viewer-centered perspective– Large angle of view – Stereo– Seeing and talking to distant collaborators

•Tele-Immersion is the merger of VR worlds and people--3D phone calls!

•For each user, Tele-Immersion needs to support:


Why Represent People ?

• Need to know relationship of people to synthetic world

• To signal exchange and shared control

• To communicate states of collaborators

• To recognize people and tell who is talking

• And, people want to be “in the picture”


Two Representations of People

• Video images• Synthetic models (avatars)


Tele-Immersion and CAVERNsoft

• Tele-Immersion requires

expertise in graphics, VR,

audio/video compression,

networking, databases• Rapidly build new tele-

immersive applications• Retro-fit old applications• CAVERNsoft enables

applications!


CAVERNsoft: Car Interiors

VisualEyes worldwideGeneral Motors Research andHughes Research Labs


Caterpillar’s Distributed Virtual Reality

Data courtesy of Valerie Lehner, NCSA, 1996


CAVERNsoft: Virtual Director


Requirements for Tele-Immersion

• Collaborative interaction and manipulation

• Communication: audio, video & avatars (virtual participants)

• Synchronous and asynchronous work

• Network and database quality of service

• Multiple heterogeneous data streams


More Requirements for Tele-Immersion

• Flexible connectivity

• High level modules for developers

• Performance monitoring

• Recordability

• Trans-oceanic capability

• Cultural sensitivity (e.g., avatar gesture translators)


CAVERNsoft Case Studies

NICE—an educational environment



Virtual Temporal BoneUIC Virtual Reality Medicine Lab


V-MailA tool for asynchronous collaboration

Virtual Trainer



iGrid: The International GridResearch Demonstrations, SC’98

• 22 demonstrations that featured technical innovations and application advancements requiring high-speed networks, with emphasis on distributed computing, tele-immersion, large datasets, remote instrumentation, and collaboration

• 10 countries: Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Russia, Singapore, Switzerland, Taiwan, USA


International Applications-Level Networking Issues

• Building relationships

• Time zones– Asynchronous collaboration– Annotations and recording

• Network speeds / QoS needs

• Speed of light

• Audio

• Culture


SC’98 iGridIndustrial Mold Filling

Indiana University (USA), Argonne National Laboratory (USA), Los Alamos National Laboratory (USA), Industrial Materials Institute, NRC (Canada), Centre de Recherche en Calcul Appliqué (Canada)


SC’98 iGrid3D Magneto Hydrodynamic Equations

Sandia National Laboratories (USA), Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (USA), High Performance Computing Center, a division of the Computing Center of Stuttgart University (Germany)


SC’98 iGridTelebot and Einstein Spacetime

University of Illinois at Chicago (USA) Max Planck Institut fuer Gravitationphysik, Albert Einstein Institut (Germany), NCSA (USA), Argonne National Laboratory (USA), Washington University (USA)


SC’98 iGridTaiwan Numerical Wind Tunnel

National Center for High Performance Computing (Taiwan), National Cheng Kung University (Taiwan), National Chioa-Tung University (Taiwan)


SC’98 iGrid—The NetherlandsParallel Lighting Simulation

SARA: Academic Computing Services Amsterdam (The Netherlands)


Impact: Five Years From Now

• Tele-immersion and data mining over high speed networks will be routine; audio, video, gesture and haptics will be integrated with latency tolerant techniques

• Methods for recording, editing, annotating, replaying, and broadcasting tele-immersive sessions will be perfected; avatars will help convey a true sense of tele-presence


International Impact

• Tele-immersion is particularly critical for trans-oceanic science and engineering users

• Implementation is particularly difficult and challenging as distance increases

• Significant participation expected by international researchers via STAR TAP, given support for applications development


For More Information

Websites

• www.evl.uic.edu

• www.evl.uic.edu/cavern

• www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/VR/cavernus• www.startap.net

university of illinois at chicago cavern the cave research network maxine d. brown electronic...

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