University of Illinois uses a Cluster for Immersive VR

It seems the folks down at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have created a 6-sided CAVE like system called ALICE. But, instead of running it off of a SGI Onyx, they've developed a distributed environment for visualization called Syzygy. Slap a few computers together and make your own holodeck!

Comments

Re:#include "Wry smile.h"

[Warvi]

It's easy to play the devil's advocate, but I think there's more poewr for enthusiasm than downplaying here.

The harder half is 6 or 12 videoprojectors (or more!), the mirrors and the (back) projection surfaces for the CAVE. Add in the tracking hardware (cost and complexity (ie EM interference))

Their source is GPL'd; it could be modified to use standard or flat monitors in a downsized setting.

you'll still need a team of grad students, builders and time.

Same goes for developing operating systems.

How many /. readers are grad students and builders, I leave as an exercise for the reader to wonder.

you need a *big* room for one of these

Unless you downsize it. How many of us have spare space for wondrous technical projects...

The electronic (wall)paper is being developed at least by IBM and, err, was it HP (my memory fails me here and I'm too lazy to check /.'s comprehensive archives on all the stories of this subject). Say it will hit market 5 yrs from now; you'd still have 5 years to make a product out of this to get it to market by my wildly suggested deadline of ten yrs from now.

All that is needed for this breakthrough is all that work to create the usable content, just like DVD's need movies to sell.

I am sure some of us are willing to put together the effort in small groups of friends interested in this achievement. Just for the fun of it!

How long until Nolan Bushnell sues?

[Junior J. Junior III]

He originally wanted to name his company "Syzygy"...