17 December 2013

New WAVE Display Technology

The University of California, San Diego’s new WAVE display, true to its name, is shaped like an ocean wave, with a curved wall array of 35 55” LG commercial LCD monitors that end in a ‘crest’ above the viewer’s head and a trough at his or her feet. The WAVE (Wide-Angle Virtual Environment), a 5x7 array of HDTVs, is now 20’ long by nearly 12’ high. Under the leadership of researchers at the UC San Diego division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) – known as the Qualcomm Institute (QI) – high-resolution computerized displays have evolved over the past decade from 2D to 3D panels and from one monitor to arrays of many monitors. They’ve transitioned from stationary structures to structures on wheels, and from thick bezels (the rim that holds the glass display) to ultra-narrow bezels. Such technology is now widely used in television newsrooms, airports and even retail stores, but not in 3D like the WAVE.

 
The WAVE was designed as part of the SCOPE project, or Scalable Omnipresent Environment, that serves as both a microscope and telescope and enables users to explore data from the nano to micro to macro to mega scale. Earlier projector-based technologies, such as the QI StarCAVE, provide the feeling of being surrounded by an image and make it possible to ‘walk through’ a model of a protein or a building, for example, but the StarCAVE requires a huge room, and is not movable or replicable. By contrast, the WAVE can be erected against a standing wall and can be moved and repliciated. WAVE content can be clearly viewed by 20 or more people at once, not possible in earlier immersive displays at UCSD. Its curved aluminum structure, is also a technical ‘fix’ for the problem of images on 3D passively polarized screens appearing as double images when placed in a large, flat array. With a curved array, the viewer can stand anywhere in front of the WAVE and experience excellent 3D with no visual distortion.

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