Sandia's 20-Million-Pixel, 130-Square-Foot Screen

schauba writes: "Cipherwar has an article describing Sandia National Laboratories' new 10-foot by 13-foot, 20-million-pixel screen. The screen was created to allow scientists to view extremely complicated systems without sacrificing detail. The images are created through a parallel imaging system using 64 computers to generate the output. This makes my 17" monitor suddenly seem so inadequate." You can also view the same text with pretty pictures on Sandia's site.

Comments

Re:Low resolution?

[dierdorf]

Although this sounds good as first glance, it's actually quite low resolution. To get 20 million pixels will be about 5000x4000 pixels. On a 10 foot screen, that's only around 40dpi. Why did they need to make it so large? A 4 or 5 foot display would have shown the same detail in a more palatable display area. I don't see what having it so big buys you...

RTFA(rticle). This is an intermediate step to the REAL display, which will be 69MPixels. Note also that this gadget isn't really that expensive - 64 PCs and 16 projectors add up to maybe a quarter million bucks. A couple of years from now, maybe 300 MPixels for no more money. Digital IMAX theaters, anyone?

The article mentions that one of these toys is under construction down the road at UT. I can see I'm going to have to be extra nice to my lapsed contacts in the CS department!

Wow, impressive registration.

[Phrogz]

When I saw the high-res image (the first one) and saw it was an array of projectors, I said "Eeeeuw! How can they get them all aligned at the edges well?"

When I looked at the 2nd hi-res image, and saw the color mismatch down the vertical center, I nodded to myself and said "Thought so. Bleah!".

But then I looked at that first hi-res image again, and noticed the bizarre shadow. Why is it all squared off? And then I realized--those projecters aren't just aligned at the edges, they're actually overlapping and registering correctly at 40dpi! Have you ever tried to get your company's LCD projector to project a reasonably orthogonal image? I can't get it even close. Now imagine getting two projectors to OVERLAP perfectly at the edges.

Color me impressed.

better monitor

[selectspec]

While the Sandia Monitor has 20 million pixels, IBM has a monitor that has 9 million pixles but is only 17".

...let me guess at the comments.

[Kjella]

- Wow! Imagine how great it would be to watch pr0n on this thing.

- I need to replace my 19/21/23/50" CRT/LCD/Plasma whatever.

- Imagine a beowolf cluster of these

- Someone give the reasearchers the goatse.cx link.

Kjella

Can you imagine...

[snake_dad]

A beo.. err... which industry will succeed in making this technogoly profitable?

HOT TEENS with incredible resolution! Hotter than you've ever seen before!
No more squinting at tiny Media Player windows!

Re:I was just wondering...

[bartlett's]

Is there a pratical, scientific use for this? Sure, I love drive-in movies, but why not just use a projector? What could possibly need a 20 million pixel display?

Well, if you actually read the article it would have answered your question:

The images are expected to allow scientists a better view of complicated systems. Sandia's immediate needs are to improve understanding of complex situations like crashes and fires, but the facility is also valuable for microsystems, nanotechnology and biological explorations. Says Heermann, "It does not make sense to view a detailed 20- or 100-million-cell simulation on a standard one-million-pixel display." Data presented as columns of numbers would be a numbing amount of information for the brain to comprehend.

Resolution is not really the issue

[q-soe]

Maybe the lower resolution (40dpi - which i would be surpised in) is not a problem - the fact is this would be usefull when dealing with larger images - youre not standing or sitting right in front of this mother after all - the pixel size would be larger i suspect thus making small detail (such as stars etc ) easier to see - maybe they are looking for field of view rather than super resolution ?