SPIE Fellow Andrew Woods to lead new Hub for Immersive Visualization in Australia
SPIE Fellow Andrew Woods was recently named technical manager of the new Hub for Immersive Visualisation for eResearch (HIVE) at Curtin University in Perth, Australia.
HIVE is a facility with four large display screens that have different functions for multi-disciplinary research on such things as data visualization, stereoscopic 3D displays, simulation, immersive 3D virtual environments, and performance art.
Woods, a research engineer at Curtin, is co-chair of the Stereoscopic Displays and Applications (SDA) conference at IS&T/SPIE Electronic Imaging Science and Technology and a member of the symposium committee. He hosts the popular 3D Theater Session that features new, original 3D films from around the world displayed in high-quality, polarized 3D on a large screen.
The SDA conference is celebrating its 25th anniversary in San Francisco, Calif. (USA), in February and will include a new "Magical Mystery 3D" bus tour of Silicon Valley 3D companies on Thursday, 6 February.
Woods said the HIVE is intended for use by researchers across the university and for "encouraging interactions and partnerships with external organizers."
The HIVE's visualization systems include:
- The Tiled Display for presentation of very high-resolution images, including multi-megapixel mosaics or gigapixel-sized panoramas. It includes 12 full-HD LCD panels, creating an ultra-large display surface of 24 megapixels over a 30-square-foot area.
- The Cylinder for presentation of immersive stereoscopic panoramas, virtual environments, and performance art. It measures 10 feet by almost 30 feet and has a 180-degree cylindrical projection surface filled by three projectors that provide a continuous display surface of about five megapixels. The Cylinder has an optical tracking system and content can be displayed in stereoscopic 3D.
- The Wedge, with two rear-projected, 12-foot diagonal display surfaces mounted in either a 90-degree wedge or as a double-wide flat screen. This system also supports stereoscopic 3D content, scientific 3D volume visualization, 3D virtual environments, and 3D video content.
- The immersive 13-foot Dome screen that entirely fills an observer's primary and peripheral vision. The dome can be used to explore 360-degree ultra-realistic panoramas, omnidirectional video, and virtual worlds. It has many potential uses, including virtual tourism.
Woods is scheduled to present a paper on color management and anaglyph 3D images at the Electronic Imaging symposium and co-teach a course on stereoscopic display application issues.
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