GeoWall: Low-cost 3-Dimensional Display Technology for the Remote Sensing Sciences WGCV-23 & WGISS-19 March 2005 Cordoba, Argentina.

GeoWall:Low-cost 3-Dimensional Display Technology

for the Remote Sensing Sciences

WGCV-23 & WGISS-19

March 2005

Cordoba, Argentina

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State of the Wall

• Past

• Present

• Future

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PAST

• CAVEs - Virtual Reality - Very Expensive• Dual-output (Stereo) graphics cards for PC

Motherboards• CAVElib port to linux• GeoWall Consortium

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Present

• Recently-developed, affordable 3D stereo visualization• Research collaborations initiated• Over 300 by Dec. 2003, current est. 500+• 10% of all U.S. Geology undergraduates• Over 15 museums• 20 papers and presentations at 2003 AGU, One half-day

Session at 2004 AGU• Potential to serve satellite remote sensing

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Future

• Commercial GIS SoftwareESRI ArcGIS, MDL Chime, DGI EarthVision, MMK Roma, IVS

Fledermaus, VRCO VGEO, AGI Satellite Tool Kit

• GeoWall2

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Future

• Commercial GIS SoftwareESRI ArcGIS, MDL Chime, DGI EarthVision, MMK Roma, IVS

Fledermaus, VRCO VGEO, AGI Satellite Tool Kit

• GeoWall2

• PG2 – Personal GeoWall2

• Stereo– Science Museum of Minnesota – St. Paul

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Bibliography

Research is supported in part by grants from the National Science Foundation (ANI-0225642, EAR-0219246, and EAR-0218918)

Steinwand, D., Davis, B., Weeks, N., 2003, “GeoWall: Investigations into Low-Cost Stereo Display Technologies”, USGS Open File Report 03-198

Leigh, J., Morin, P., Johnson, A., DeFanti, T., Brown, M., Sandin, D., Rack, F., Vernon, F., Orcutt, J., Davis, B., van Keken, P., Smarr, L., 2003, “GeoWall-2: a Scalable Display System for the GeoSciences”, Fall 2003 American Geophysical Union Conference, San Francisco, CA, December 8-12, 2003

Davis, B., 2004, “Virtual Reality Meets GIS: 3D on the Wall”, ArcNews, Summer 2004, Vol. 26 No.2

Davis, B., 2004, “Affordable Systems for Viewing Spatial Data in Stereo”, ArcUSer, July-September 2004

Davis, B., Morin, P., Ramstad, M., 2004, “Three-Dimensional Anaglyph of the Earth, ESRI Map Book Volume Nineteen, 2004

Leigh, J., Renambot, L., Johnson, A., Brown, M., Sandin, J., DeFanti, T., Ellisman, M., Orcutt, J., Smarr, L., Davis, B., Morin, P., Ito, E., Rack, F., 2004, “Challenges in Ultra-High-Resolution Visualization and Collaboration”, 2004, High Information Content Display Systems Symposium, Arlington, VA, September 13-14, 2004,

Krishnaprasad, N., Vishwanath, V., Venkataraman, S., Rao, A., Renambot, L., Leigh, J., Johnson, A., Davis, B., 2004, “JuxtaView – A Tool for Interactive Visualization of Large Imagery on Scalable Tiled Displays”, Cluster Computing 2004, San Diego, CA, Sep. 20-23, 2004

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Contacts

http://GeoWall.org

[email protected]

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References

http://edc.usgs.gov

http://GeoWall.org

http://www.evl.uic.edu/cavern/optiputer/

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Number of GeoWalls – 12/03

0

50

100

150

200

250

Nu

mber

of

Wall

s

TotalOtherGeo-related

2-10 new systems a week(*Cost of a modest system)

$15,000*

$6,000*

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Cost of a Modest System

$0

$2,000

$4,000

$6,000

$8,000

$10,000

$12,000

$14,000

$16,000

June '01 June '02 June '03 Dec. '03

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GeoWall IndexApproximate number of GeoWalls: 250

Number outside the US: ~30

Percentage in the classroom: ~75%

Percentage of non-major earth science students that see a GeoWall in the US: 15-25%

Average cost of one “CAVE”: $1.5 million

Cost of the GeoWalls currently in educational service: $1.5 million

Most popular material: USGS’s Stereo LANDSAT Imagery

Data transferred from GeoWall.org: 279 Gigabytes

Busiest day on GeoWall.org: 300,000 hits in 8 hours on September 1, 2002 (Slashdot.org article)

Publications beginning to appear

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Notable Audiences• Under-Secretaries of DOI

• SD Sen. Tom Daschle

• NASA deputy director

• SD Governor Mike Rounds

• CBS News

• Federal Agency and Academic Collaborators

• Various USGS HQ staff

• BOR

• Jamie Rounds, SD 2010 Initiative

• FEMA Regional Director

• Students

• Teachers

• USGS Directors

• Ukrainian Land and Resource Management Center

• National Wetlands Inventory Coordinator

• National Volcano Hazards Program Coordinator

• Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance

• Canadian Center for Remote Sensing

• Naval Oceanographic Office

• Chinese Bureau of Mapping

• NIMA

• State-wide Lewis&Clark Meeting

• SD Geography Bee

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Development Direction Thus FarHardware development• Now stable and spun off to 4 companies

Software development• “Seed” applications freely distributed• Encourage the support of GeoWall software by key vendors:

ESRI ArcGIS, MDL Chime, DGI EarthVision, MMK Roma, IVS Fledermaus, VRCO VGEO, AGI Satellite Tool Kit

Establishment of GeoWall community• 4th Annual GeoWall Meeting Spring – May 2004• Special interest groups being established• Museum community underway

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GeoWall Museum Network

Alaska: The Imaginarium, Anchorage.Illinois: SciTech Hands on Museum, Aurora; Discovery Center, Rockford; Lake

County Discovery Museum, Wauconda; Lakeview Museum, Peoria.Indiana: Evansville Museum of Arts and Science, Evansville; Science Central,

Fort Wayne; Children’s Science and Technology Museum, Terre Haute. Iowa: Bluedorn Science Imaginarium, Waterloo.Texas: Don Harrington Discovery Center, Amarillo

Other Museums:

Chicago Museum of Science and IndustryAdler Planetarium, ChicagoScience Museum of MinnesotaLowell ObservatoryTexas Memorial Museum - UT Austin

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Final Points• GeoWall is now going beyond earth sciences• Price can’t get much lower• Basic technology is ready• Vendors are supporting the community• Critical mass has been reached in the geosciences• Assessment is just beginning• Timing for feedback is excellent• Opportunities for collaborative research