TERAVISION is a hardware-assisted, network-enabled “PowerPoint” projector for the Access Grid, enabling anyone to plug a laptop, workstation, or even cluster node, into an Access Grid and deliver a presentation without having to install or configure any software or distribute any data files in advance.

A user who wants to give a presentation on a laptop or show output from a node of a graphics cluster simply plugs the VGA or DVI output of the computer into the TeraVision Box (or VisionBox). The box captures the signal at its native resolution, and digitizes and broadcasts it to other networked VisionBoxes. One can transmit an entire tiled display, provided there are sufficient VisionBoxes at each endpoint. Two VisionBoxes can be connected to the twin heads of an AGAVE system to stream stereoscopic computer graphics. By decoupling image generation from image capture and transmission, the host graphics system can operate at optimal frame rates.

The current VisionBox prototype consists of a DLP projector connected to a PC with a high-speed frame grabber card and a high-speed network interface card. It provides point-to-point display sharing, and will eventually support broadcasting. When multiple VisionBoxes are needed to display a stereoscopic image or a tiled display, it synchronizes both image capture at the source, and image display at the destination.