Iowa State's C6 VR room upgrading to 100 million pixels

Iowa State University has just announced a $4 million overhaul of its so-called "C6" virtual reality room that will enable a total of 100,000,000 pixels to be displayed on all six 10-foot by 10-foot surfaces in the room, and supposedly make it the most realistic environment of its kind in the world. In use since June of 2000, C6 has served a role in projects for fields as diverse as urban planning, cell biology, and mechanical engineering, and is currently being funded by military grant money to develop a VR room which would enable a single operator to remotely view and control a squadron of unmanned planes. To give the refurbished room an impressive sixteen times the resolution of its current iteration, researchers at the school's Virtual Reality Applications Center are hooking 24 Sony digital projectors up to an HP server stuffed with 96 graphics processors, as well as adding eight channel surround sound and motion tracking software. Iowa State students looking to break into the room at night for some absolutely sick FPS action can do so this fall.

[Via ZDNet]

[tcc3 @ May 10th 2006 6:04PM]

When they turn it off is it a black room with yellow grid lines on the walls? =)

[Cubeguy @ May 10th 2006 6:30PM]

I'm loving the star trek reference
i can't really think of anything else to say that actually has to do with this thing though.

[ron g @ May 10th 2006 6:47PM]

Alma mater, do me proud.

[Karl Bates @ May 10th 2006 6:50PM]

#1 said,
When they turn it off is it a black room with yellow grid lines on the walls? =)

Very Funny, lets hope the safty protocols are engaged.

[w s iii @ May 10th 2006 8:37PM]

this may or may not interest this crowd, but i'm a grad student for the psychology dept. at ISU and we have used the C6 for a 3d first person shooter experiment to see if more realism would increase effects of game play (looking at aggression, specifically). unfortunately, the graphics weren't too great at the time and we ended up with a pretty complicated data set, but hopefully we'll be able to get back in there with the 100million pixel upgrade

oh, and so to answer #2, it can do better than DOOM, you have a gun in your hand and you have to duck around corners and move all over. tons of fun : ]

[Paul F. @ May 10th 2006 9:37PM]

I'm at ISU too, and to me the C6 just seems like a big shiny thing in Howe Hall..we never really get to use it...or even see the inside.

[Eric @ May 10th 2006 10:16PM]

Wow, some almost local news :)
lol, big shiny thing. That it is.
I've seen it, but I've never been inside it.

[Chris @ May 10th 2006 10:26PM]

It's time for them to upgrade. I was in it ~4 years ago in a 'cave' demo. While it's impressive to be immersed on all sides, the graphics weren't too impressive. An Xbox 360 owns it.

It uses a SGI farm and Barco projectors at the moment (or did when I was in it) but I suspect since SGI is more or less dead, it's time to get some new hardware in.

It's still pretty neat - especially considering it's at ISU, not MIT.

[Claudiu Spulber @ May 11th 2006 2:46AM]

"...i'm a grad student for the psychology dept. at ISU and we have used the C6 for a 3d first person shooter experiment"
Yeah, right, "experiment" :)). Why don't you admit that when everyone leaves the building you gather a troop of colleagues and play until morning. Did you do any "experiments" to see how "certain" movies look in C6?

[Keymaster @ May 11th 2006 8:50AM]

I give this thing about 2 weeks before it tries to take over the bridge.

[Jason @ May 11th 2006 10:33AM]

This isn't really that unique. Almost every major or large independent oil & gas exploration company has a similar (and much nicer) immersion room for viewing 3D seismic data.

[Justin @ May 11th 2006 10:37AM]

WoOt! This is my F'in Alma mater too! Go Clones!

[Andy Brudtkuhl @ May 11th 2006 1:29PM]

Also my alma mater. I agree with above -- it's ISU not MIT. Give em some credit. go clones

[baru @ May 12th 2006 3:31PM]

Hi. Does anybody know which HP server will be there in the C6?