Students - How to Participate

The Cornell Theory Center has opened new facilities for development of virtual environments. In addition to a Windows CAVE for immersive virtual viewing, we now have a single-screen ConCAVE system and a computer lab with stereo displays. We are looking for students and other researchers who want to work on visualization of data or projects involving art, architecture, or other disciplines.

Creating a visualization in the CAVE requires C++ programming skills in order to manipulate scene graphs. The software for displaying OpenGL in a CAVE is not complex beyond basic C++.

Semester projects or MEng. projects are appropriate. The Theory Center has a small, knowledgeable support staff who will review proposals and assist with technical challenges. Graduate and undergraduate students are encouraged to apply, especially with the support of a principal investigator. To find out more, contact Dr. Dolgert, ajd27@cornell.edu.

Current Projects

DirectX input to Trackd - source and compiled - Brian Kowolowski and Andrew Dolgert
This is a driver for trackd to read input from DirectX joysticks like Logitech sidewinders. 

Interactive Architecture in the CAVE
Eon Studio runs well on a cluster without tracking, but we are trying to make it run with head tracking in our CAVE. This is not novel, but it is taking a bit of work. This work will produce a sample Eon file for head tracking in the CAVE. Andrew Dolgert

OpenDX in the CAVE - Brian Kowolowski and Ken Ridley
We used to have OpenDX running in the SGI CAVE. OpenDX is still a powerful visualization package, so we will make it run in the Windows CAVE.

Clustering for Visualization under Windows
Windows clusters are something we study at the Cornell Theory Center, and the CAVE is a good place to work on clustering tools because the display nodes are tightly coupled. We have, already, a number of tools used to make the CAVE double-click friendly, so that applications can be run from a single user console.

Trackd Service - source and binary available
This is a Windows service which wraps the trackd demon. It has a control console which connects to the service over named pipes in order to configure it remotely.

VRScape Run - unavailable pending testing - Brian Kowolowski, Ken Ridley, and Andrew Dolgert
This simple wrapper around MPI will run VRScape on all of the cluster machines. It needs a day of testing (our MPI license expired just before it was to be posted).

ClusterGINA
This is a more novel project, currently a proof of concept, which allows the user to login to all the display nodes remotely from the head machine.