FROM CAVES TO OPTIPORTALS: EVOLUTION AND DEPLOYMENT OF VISUAL COMMUNICATION FOR GEOSCIENTISTS

Virtual Reality The goal of virtual reality is to address the influence of human factors to allow the human brain to better process the data from virtual environments by presenting data in a visual form that the human brain has evolved to process. Such systems can enable scientists to experience models of reality “virtually”, without the expense and difficulty of traveling to remote locations. For example, oceanographers can analyze and understand the geology and features of the ocean floor without traveling in a submarine, and geologists can visualize and hypothesize about the geology of Antarctica without having to experience sub-zero temperatures.

Consumer-grade Visualization Over time, virtual reality, led by developments at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago, became more capable and realistic. However, while achieving additional capability, cost and complexity became barriers to deployment in settings useable by every-day earth scientists. CAVE technology eventually was ported to a smaller, less expensive configurations, but wide acceptance was not achieved until the GeoWall Consortium led the effort to make stereo display systems affordable and commonplace.

Software Software is always the most difficult and expensive component of any computer system, including virtual reality display systems. GeoWall technology did not become widely used until after commercial software routinely used by earth scientists became available. Recently, free web-browser based software, such as Google Earth, has increased access to 3-D stereo visualization to an entirely new set of earth science data consumers.

Deployment Though the NSF-sponsored OptIPuter project has developed and deployed leading edge networking, grid computing and visualization cyberinfrastructure technologies to again advance the capabilities of scientific visualization, use of these technologies by earth scientists will not become wide-spread until their deployment follows the evolution of GeoWall technology. This model determines that technology must be affordable, comprised of commodity hardware and software components, and widely available to enable scientists at different locations to collaborate using similar technology. However, the high-speed network access to visual “OptIPortals” developed by the OptIPuter project should not be discounted. As network bandwidths increase and become widely available, only real-time access to earth science data using commonplace visual communications tools will make virtual reality practical and meaningful to earth scientists. Therefore, widespread deployment and use by geoscientists of visual communications systems must embrace the concepts developed by the OptIPuter project while evolving toward the cost model of the GeoWall Consortium.

Demonstration OptIPuter technology resident on the University of California at San Diego campus will be overviewed during this talk, and then demonstrated in an informal setting at other times during the program. These technologies will include GeoWall, HiperWall, Varrier displays used to prototype future visualization technology capabilities.