Beyond Digital Cinema: Globally Shared Visualization and Virtual Reality

	AVATAR Lecture Series
	Beyond Digital Cinema: Globally Shared Visualization and Virtual Reality
	Tom DeFanti, University of California, San Diego

	Johnston Hall 338 April 30, 2010 - 01:00 pm
Abstract: This has been a great year for 3D digital cinema. What's beyond? Super resolution tiled displays are now real products and the bezels have almost disappeared in 2D displays. 3D (with and without glasses) is finally here. The networks, switches, and interface cards are affordable at 10Gb/s, HD videoconferencing is easy to make work and software to integrate it all is propagating fast with SAGE (from EVL) and CGLX (from Calit2). So, you don't need to take off your shoes, sweater, mobile phone, and belt to "go there" anymore to work with your colleagues. And, enough energy can be saved with one long-distance multi-person meeting to run these displays for a year! Several hardware and software systems, designed and proven to be replicable by cyberinfrastructure users, will be discussed and lavishly illustrated.

Speaker's Bio: Thomas A. DeFanti, PhD, is a research scientist at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) at the University of California, San Diego. He is principal investigator of the NSF International Research Network Connections Program TransLight/StarLight project that provides a persistent 10 Gigabit networking infrastructure between the USA and Europe, and he is principal investigator of the NSF GreenLight Instrument project and the KAUST Calit2 OptIPresence Project. He also is a founder of CineGrid. DeFanti is an internationally recognized expert in computer graphics since the early 1970s. DeFanti has amassed a number of credits, including: use of his lab's hardware and software for the computer animation produced for the 1977 "Star Wars" movie; recipient of the 1988 ACM Outstanding Contribution Award; and appointed an ACM Fellow in 1994. He also shares recognition along with EVL director Daniel J. Sandin for conceiving the CAVE virtual reality theater in 1991.


This lecture has a reception.

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