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A distributed graphics system for large tiled displays

Authors:

Greg Humphreys,

Pat HanrahanAuthors Info & Claims

VIS '99: Proceedings of the conference on Visualization '99: celebrating ten years

Pages 215 - 223

Published: 24 October 1999 Publication History

Abstract

Recent interest in large displays has led to renewed development of tiled displays, which are comprised of several individual displays arranged in an array and used as one large logical display. Stanford's “Interactive Mural” is an example of such a display, using an overlapping four by two array of projectors that back-project onto a diffuse screen to form a 6' by 2' display area with a resolution of over 60 dpi. Writing software to make effective use of the large display space is a challenge because normal window system interaction metaphors break down. One promising approach is to switch to immersive applications; another approach, the one we are investigating, is to emulate office, conference room or studio environments which use the space to display a collection of visual material to support group activities.

In this paper we describe a virtual graphics system that is designed to support multiple simultaneous rendering streams from both local and remote sites. The system abstracts the physical number of computers, graphics subsystems and projectors used to create the display. We provide performance measurements to show that the system scales well and thus supports a variety of different hardware configurations. The system is also interesting because it uses transparent “layers,” instead of windows, to manage the screen.

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Renambot LMarrinan TAurisano JNishimoto AMateevitsi VBharadwaj KLong LJohnson ABrown MLeigh J(2016)SAGE2Future Generation Computer Systems10.1016/j.future.2015.05.01454:C(296-305)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.future.2015.05.014
Masia BWetzstein GDidyk PGutierrez D(2013)Special Section on Advanced DisplaysComputers and Graphics10.1016/j.cag.2013.10.00337:8(1012-1038)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.cag.2013.10.003
Bragdon AKo HTan DFitzpatrick GGutwin CBegole BKellogg W(2011)Gesture select:Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/1978942.1978970(187-196)Online publication date: 7-May-2011
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Index Terms

A distributed graphics system for large tiled displays
1. Computer systems organization
  1. Architectures
    1. Other architectures
      1. Special purpose systems
2. Computing methodologies
  1. Computer graphics

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Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

VIS '99: Proceedings of the conference on Visualization '99: celebrating ten years

October 1999

565 pages

ISBN:078035897X

Chairmen:
Steve Bryson
NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
,
Theresa-Marie Rhyne
Lockheed Martin/U.S. EPA Scientific Visualization Center
,
Deborah Silver
Rutgers Univ.
,
Lloyd Treinish
IBM

Sponsors

SIGGRAPH: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques

Publisher

IEEE Computer Society Press

Washington, DC, United States

Publication History

Published: 24 October 1999

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Cited By

Renambot LMarrinan TAurisano JNishimoto AMateevitsi VBharadwaj KLong LJohnson ABrown MLeigh J(2016)SAGE2Future Generation Computer Systems10.1016/j.future.2015.05.01454:C(296-305)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.future.2015.05.014
Masia BWetzstein GDidyk PGutierrez D(2013)Special Section on Advanced DisplaysComputers and Graphics10.1016/j.cag.2013.10.00337:8(1012-1038)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.cag.2013.10.003
Bragdon AKo HTan DFitzpatrick GGutwin CBegole BKellogg W(2011)Gesture select:Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/1978942.1978970(187-196)Online publication date: 7-May-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1978942.1978970
Zhang XBajaj C(2009)Scalable isosurface visualization of massive datasets on commodity off-the-shelf clustersJournal of Parallel and Distributed Computing10.1016/j.jpdc.2008.07.00669:1(39-53)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.jpdc.2008.07.006
Summet JFlagg MCham TRehg JSukthankar R(2007)Shadow Elimination and Blinding Light Suppression for Interactive Projected DisplaysIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics10.1109/TVCG.2007.100713:3(508-517)Online publication date: 1-May-2007
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TVCG.2007.1007
Moritz EWischgoll TMeyer J(2005)Comparison of input devices and displays for protein visualizationXRDS: Crossroads, The ACM Magazine for Students10.1145/1144375.114438012:2(5-5)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2005
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Prabhat Fulcomer SSingh GLau RChrysanthou YDarken R(2005)Experiences in driving a cave with IBM scalable graphics engine-3 (SGE-3) prototypesProceedings of the ACM symposium on Virtual reality software and technology10.1145/1101616.1101663(231-234)Online publication date: 7-Nov-2005
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Majumder AStevens R(2005)Perceptual photometric seamlessness in projection-based tiled displaysACM Transactions on Graphics10.1145/1037957.103796424:1(118-139)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2005
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Liu ZShi JPeng HXiong H(2005)D3DPRProceedings of the 10th Asia-Pacific conference on Advances in Computer Systems Architecture10.1007/11572961_44(540-550)Online publication date: 24-Oct-2005
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Bordes NPailthorpe B(2004)High resolution scalable displaysProceedings of the 2004 Australasian symposium on Information Visualisation - Volume 3510.5555/1082101.1082119(151-156)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2004
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