plastk:net

24-Monitor Quake

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Sabri) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 02:39:00 +0000

Our lab also has a 24 monitor display wall, and as you can see from the pictures below, I got Quake 3 running on it. The system is driven by 12 linux servers (2 monitors per server) using Distributed Multihead X (DMX) and Chromium. Chromium distributes the OpenGL rendering from the head node to all of the servers. The game runs fairly fast, though some lighting effects had to be turned off and Chromium is having some trouble with the mouse. Even so, playing the game is an awesome experience. Feel free to email me (plastk@vt.edu) with what you think.

Quake 3 running at 10240x3072 resolution at 15-30 FPS

A view of our 12-node Linux cluster resting behind the display.

Another view of the cluster/display with our ViCON system in the background.

Some stills from the videos I thought were interesting.

50-Monitor Display

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Sabri) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 02:16:00 +0000

Here are some images of the new 50-monitor display prototype that was developed at the Gigapixel Lab at Virginia Tech. Since I graduated, I won't be able to play with it, but I wanted to keep everyone updated with the work going on there. The display is comprised of 21" touch-screen monitors (thats why they are shiney) and--like the previous display--is driven by a cluster. This time (to save space) we are using 25 shuttle PCs as can be seen in the images below. The whole setup has a resolution of at least 12800x5120 (65,536,000 pixels). Since I'm not around anymore, I'm not sure if we'll get any gaming up and running on this monster, but I'll see what I can do. As usual, you can reach me at plastk@vt.edu if you have any questions or comments. Enjoy the images!

50-monitor setup running at a resolution of 12800x5120.

The 25-node Linux cluster of Shuttle PC's behind the display.

Publications

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Sabri) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 02:09:00 +0000

Journals
Sabri, A., Ball, R., Bhatia, S., Fabian, A., and North, C. High-Resolution Gaming: Interfaces, Notifications and the User Experience. Interacting with Computers Journal. March 2007: Volume 19, issue 2, pp. 151-166.
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Conference Papers
Ball, R., Varghese, M., Sabri,A., Cox, E.D., Fierer, C., Peterson, M., Carstensen, B., and North, C. (2005) Evaluating the Benefits of Tiled Displays for Navigating Maps. In IASTED International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (IASTED-HCI 2005), pp. 66-71. Phoenix, Arizona.
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Ball, R., Sabri, A., and North, C. (2005) High-Resolution Displays Facilitating Greater Insight in a Dynamic Environment. In IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization Proceedings Compendium (InfoVis), pp. 5-6. Minneapolis, Minnesota.
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Booker, J., Buennemeyer, T., Sabri, A., North, C. High-Resolution Displays Enhancing Geo-Temporal Data Visualizations. In ACMSE 2007. Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Warcraft 2

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Sabri) — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 01:39:00 +0000

As most of you know, my research focuses on display wall user interfaces at the Center for Human-Computer Interaction at Virginia Tech. My main focus of late has been on multi-mon game interfaces and notification systems. I modified the open source Stratagus engine which runs the Warcraft 2 clone--Wargus--to support a resolution of 3840x2160 pixels. I designed a variety of UI's to accomadate for such a large surface area--but I'll get into the details of that later. For now I'll explain the different system architectures we're working with at the lab. The system that Warcraft 2 is running on in the images below is just a 3.2GHZ 2GB RAM Windows XP machine with 5 dual-head graphics cards. The screen is made by VisBox and consists of a matrix of HD rear projectors projecting onto a special acrylic glass. Each screen, called a VisBlock, can be arranged in various forms and allows for a virtually seamless, very high definition display. We currently have 18 arranged in a 6x3 matrix, but each half is run independently (but that will change soon). Even with only 9 monitors, you can see almost the entire map (the largest supported).

Full shot of Warcraft 2 running at 3840x2160.

Angled shot showing how the projectors display onto the glass.

Another angled shot taken a little closer.

A close up shot demonstrating the UI centered around the cursor.

Side shot showing off one row of projectors.

Quake 3 Videos

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Sabri) — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 18:48:00 +0000

Here are some videos featuring Quake 3 Arena being played with a gyro mouse as well as a standard mouse. The resolution of the game is still 10240x3072 and runs on a 24-monitor Linux cluster here at Virginia Tech's HCI lab. As you can see from the videos, I was able to increase the frame-rate and the game is very playable and incredibly addicting. As usual, you can reach me at plastk@vt.edu if you have any questions or comments. Hope you like the setup! (Disclaimer: I had to splice together some of the shots to make it look like I actually have skill.)

First Video

Quake 3 (Gyro) on 24 Monitors (YouTube)

Second Video

Quake 3 (Optical) on 24 Monitors (YouTube)

First Post

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Sabri) — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 13:57:00 +0000

Just testing things out for the first time.