1.1 What is a Geo Wall
In plain terms, a Geo Wall is a low cost Visualization system. It is a desktop
PC running on any one of OS (Windows, Linux and Mac) with a fast graphics
card, two projectors and a screen. The projectors work in cohesion with interfering
rays causing a passive stereo image. A significant advantage of the passive
stereo images is that they can be viewed using cheap 3D glasses thereby avoiding
the costly shutter glasses which the active stereo requires.
1.2 What is the use of a Geo Wall
The Geo Wall, being a low cost system became an instantly popular among the
research circles. It found usage in data sets visualization and also in teaching
science to college and graduate level students. The level of reach Geo Wall
has achieved can be arrived from the fact that it’s possible for a department
to procure Geo wall for less than 10000 US $.
1.3 Software that operates on the Geo Wall.
The software that operates on the Geo Wall is available mostly as free ware
and hence ensures wider range of usage. Some of the applications that the
geo wall supports or rather requires are given below.
Immersive:
This is an application developed by the EVL for viewing open inventor models.
The data can be a single Inventor model or a flipbook of models that you can
animate or single-step through. Downloading and installation details of immersaview
can be had from http://www.evl.uic.edu/cavern/agave/immersaview.
Immersaview requires Windows/Linux, fltk (fast and light toolkit) and Open
Inventor. In order for the passive stereo to work, the images from the two
separate projectors must match up on the screen. We usually stack projectors
vertically
Wall View: Wall view is the application that allows viewing
of stereo images on the Geo Wall. This was developed by the Ken- Chin Purcell.
An application that runs on windows can be downloaded for free at the site
http://www.chin-purcell.org
More Software and information can be had from AGAVE Home page