[PD] PD and GEM for virtual environments

[Peter Brinkmann]

Chris,
Thanks for your reply!

> I gave a talk on GEM at the EVL at UIC here in Chicago and there was 
> discussion about using it for such purposes.  The large CAVE system 
> still runs on a four pipe SGI Onyx system and that is primarily due to 
> sync for the four displays rather than raw horsepower.
Hmm, I thought that EVL had dismantled its CAVE. At least, I've been told
that CAVE components from UIC are currently sitting in some basement at
UIUC, awaiting reassembly. When did you give your talk?

> The main 
> obstacle to using multiple machines in the CAVE is the precise display 
> sync for the four walls required for the full 3D illusion.
Sure. However, the installations I'm involved with (PORTAL and CUBE)
have fast machines and fast networks, and the sort of applications I
have in mind wouldn't have to move an awful lot of data from the master
to the walls. That, combined with the low temporal resolution of the
human eye, gives me the impression that my idea may be viable.
Alternatively, the master copy of PD could send out clock messages
to synchronize rendering.

For a single wall, it should certainly work, and even that would be
interesting. Plus, the setup I described shouldn't take more than an
afternoon or so to build. After all, it would hardly involve any
programming; just take some existing components and put them together.
If synchronization turns out to be problematic, fine, I'll scale it
down to a single wall.

> I do know of projects outside the CAVE that mixed the VRML engine
> with Pd/GEM with great success.
Any pointers?

> I would be interested in looking into this again, and I believe some of 
> the faculty and students at UIC read this list from time to time (Drew, 
> Lief are you out there?).  There's definitely some opportunities to 
> explore.
Excellent! This might be a very worthwhile project. While there's no
shortage of packages that drive CAVEs (CAVE libs, Syzygy, VR++, jReality,
etc.), there's relatively little software that's built upon them. Putting
PD and GEM in virtual environments should open up a plethora of potential
CAVE applications, and it might enable collaboration with a whole new
group of people.
    Peter