Hello- I'm seeing many strange things posted here about the NCSA CAVE. I actually work with it, so here is some perspective.
First, the CAVE was developed with NCSA and EVL (electronics visualization laboratory, at the University of Illinois in CHicago), with much help from SGI. It was NOT developed by the US Army.
The acronym is recursive, but it is also a reference to Plato - inferring reality from the shadows on the wall of a (rock) cave.
This is very, very far from novel technology now. I believe that it was actually 8 years ago that the CAVE was installed (NCSA having the first). Nowadays there are 25+ CAVE's around - and not just in academic settings. I believe Pixar has a CAVE, to do 3D modelling work.
There are 25+ CAVEs in the world, as well as hundreds of ImmersaDesks (which have the same features as the CAVEs, but have screens only the size of a large drafting table). In fact, anyone can buy one through Pyramid Systems. The original CAVE was ~1,000,000 dollars.
The US Army is interested in 3D simulations using the CAVE. I've seen one app, but I actually have no idea how it is being used, and I don't want to start any conspiracy theories. It did look more innocuous than some people are theorizing.
The CAVE has been used for (and still is): Hydrology visualisation, Vis. of the formation of galaxies, Vis. of network traffic flow, Simulating earth moving equipment (i.e. CAT), Choreographing computer generated movies, and as a tool for math visualization. And yes, it does have Quake.
The CAVE does provide a sterescopic 3D experience, and allows tracking of several sensors (normally head and a hand carried wans), each of which reports position and rotation about all 3 axes. Ours has 4 walls. Octaphonic sound is availible too. Some CAVE's have all 6 walls, force-feedback datagloves, and higher resolution than ours.
One last thing. The CAVE is a beast, an old beast. It is a wonderfully cool place to work, but nowadays with a linux cluster and some nice (over the counter) graphics hardware, there will soon be many more opportunities availible for drastically less money (In fact, one goup here at UIUC is working on a linux cluster version). The CAVE and it's 4 InfiniteReality engines still screams along, but the alternatives are very quickly catching up.
For more tech specs, i'll write a different entry.
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Hello-
I'm seeing many strange things posted here about
the NCSA CAVE. I actually work with it, so here is some perspective.
First, the CAVE was developed with NCSA and EVL
(electronics visualization laboratory, at the University of Illinois in CHicago), with much help from SGI. It was NOT developed by the US Army.
The acronym is recursive, but it is also a reference to Plato - inferring reality from the shadows on the wall of a (rock) cave.
This is very, very far from novel technology now.
I believe that it was actually 8 years ago that the CAVE was installed (NCSA having the first).
Nowadays there are 25+ CAVE's around - and not just in academic settings. I believe Pixar has a CAVE, to do 3D modelling work.
There are 25+ CAVEs in the world, as well as hundreds of ImmersaDesks (which have the same features as the CAVEs, but have screens only the size of a large drafting table). In fact, anyone can buy one through Pyramid Systems. The original CAVE was ~1,000,000 dollars.
The US Army is interested in 3D simulations using the CAVE. I've seen one app, but I actually have no idea how it is being used, and I don't want to start any conspiracy theories. It did look more innocuous than some people are theorizing.
The CAVE has been used for (and still is):
Hydrology visualisation,
Vis. of the formation of galaxies,
Vis. of network traffic flow,
Simulating earth moving equipment (i.e. CAT),
Choreographing computer generated movies,
and as a tool for math visualization.
And yes, it does have Quake.
The CAVE does provide a sterescopic 3D experience, and allows tracking of several sensors (normally head and a hand carried wans), each of which reports position and rotation about all 3 axes.
Ours has 4 walls. Octaphonic sound is availible too.
Some CAVE's have all 6 walls, force-feedback datagloves, and higher resolution than ours.
One last thing. The CAVE is a beast, an old beast. It is a wonderfully cool place to work, but nowadays with a linux cluster and some nice (over the counter) graphics hardware, there will soon be many more opportunities availible for drastically less money (In fact, one goup here at UIUC is working on a linux cluster version). The CAVE and
it's 4 InfiniteReality engines still screams along, but the alternatives are very quickly catching up.
For more tech specs, i'll write a different entry.