The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) convened a 2-day, invited workshop, CalREN-XD / HPR, at Calit2 / University of California San Diego, September 15-16, 2008.

The focus of the workshop was showcasing end-to-end applications among California researchers and collaborators regionally, nationally and globally. Advanced networking presentations and real-time demonstrations exemplify the ways in which the CalREN-XD network infrastructure is transforming scientific research, making tomorrow’s science possible today.

Among the real-time demos was EVL’s Visualcasting research Visualcasting: Global Ultra-High-Resolution Tele-Presence and Collaborative Visualization Over High-Speed Networks. SAGE (Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment) visualization middleware, developed by EVL with NSF OptIPuter funding, enables human-to-human communication and data-sharing communication by streaming ultra-high-resolution content - such as ultra-high-resolution 2D and 3D computer graphics from remote rendering and compute clusters and storage devices, as well as high-definition video camera output - to tiled display walls of variable size over high-speed networks. SAGE serves as a window manager; allowing users to move, resize, and overlap windows as easily as on standard desktop computers. SAGE Visualcasting is a technology to broadcast this content to multiple sites equipped with scalable-resolution display systems. In this demonstration, multiple uncompressed ultra-high-definition video streams and 4K (8-Megapixel) animations will be streamed among San Diego, Chicago, the Netherlands, South Korea and possibly Australia, to demonstrate how Visualcasting can enable a new generation of telepresence beyond what is commercially possible today.

EVL associate director Maxine Brown and project coordinator Laura Wolf were among the conference organizers and management team.

URL