NASA creates hyperwall-2, the world's highest resolution visualization system
By Joshua Fruhlinger 
posted June 27th 2008 8:24AM
posted June 27th 2008 8:24AM
[Thanks, james]
posted June 27th 2008 8:24AM
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can it play crysis?
DIE
That comment was lowest ranked before you posted it.
it's not funny or clever anymore (if it ever was)
Get a life.
Actually it is funny to see how mad people get on old jokes.
We should at least update it to something more relevant, such as "Will it play Age of Conan?"
or how about to "will it play 'withma bolz' ??"
Forget Crysis. What this baby needs for a test drive is an HD porn movie - now that's what I call entertainment! :D
" Will it play Pac-Man ? " Sounds more funny ;-)
No one cares about Crysis. The real question is will it play Pong?
And how many Watts?
My thoughts exactly. I'd like to know what the monthly bill for this is and if I could make it run on a mixture o solar an wind energy.
@hugoliva: I'm afraid not - solar/wind-power electrons are the wrong size.
Hyperwall-3, 30 by 10 feet of touchscreen goodness?
how would you touch the upper part of the screen?
since NASA is a company specializing rocket engineering, I'd think they would those people jet packs to hover while touching all that pixels...
Ladders.
Like those old style sliding ones they used to have in libraries.
@ oddish2211: Water squirted through my nose at that comment. Damn you. That hurt. Twas funny, though.
"how would you touch the upper part of the screen?"
With Hyperladder-3?
@oddish2211: nerf ball :)
how about a mega stylus...
Will cope with HL2 then?
Good, count me in.
I've played Quake III, on a small (in comparison) 15 screen display, It's pretty good at 34mega-pixels
http://www.flickr.com/photos/richardcunningham/1337880279/
But, to be honest it better on a single big screen without the bars, like the 4 metre by 2 metre one we have:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/richardcunningham/1449065080/
Very nice, but I'm of the opinion that NASA should spend its money on, y'know, spaceships.
I totally agree, It looks like it was done because they "could" With the shuttle being retired budget cuts and the like it seems that they could come up with a huge waste of tax payers money.. but ummm can it play crysis.. OK I know tired but I just had to..
Which is all well and good until you realize that NASA's research is multifaceted.
And more then that, that those spaceships cost a fuck ton of money... so that when NASA gets around to building them they want to understand every nuance (however subtle it may be) about the craft's performance.
To quote NASA: "For instance, one can plot energy, density, momentum, pressure, temperature, and so forth across the rows of the
hyperwall, while distributing streamlines, contours, volume rendering,
colormaps and viewing angles across the columns. The resulting
combinatoric array of visualizations permit side-by-side comparison
and allow the user to choose the most effective means of
interrogating and presenting a feature of interest."
It's not enough to just build the spaceship if when you launch it you don't learn anything from it.
All the hi-res imaging in the world can't stop Goldeneye.
I'm glad someone else had the same thought. This would look right at home in a Siberian bunker.
You think they could have gone with a smaller bezel... damn.
And also, I question the need. Other than an insane lan party.
i'm with A
what's up with all that bezel space. it's more wall than display!
Perhaps its intended, a grid overlay to show fall out after dropping the nukes the system was designed for.
You never know.
The bezels look big because they are 2 small bezels side by side, if you look hard enough you can see the line between them.
Can they all be switched individually? I wounder if you could use one monitor for each Directv HD channel, or every MLB game at the same time, that would be sweet
so will the old hyperwall be on ebay any time soon???
Oh my...the...the...power
1/4 billion pixels! Can 720p really be called high-definition anymore?
I would be interested to know how much this thing costs.
Side note - NASA is cool.
massive bezels! Surely they could have used some 40" toshiba screens or something, less screens with thin frames the better.
Wonder what they use it for.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/nasalife/index.html
NASA benefits our lives everyday and is less than 1% of the federal
budget. Please support their work, NASA doesn't buy things they
can't justify. TRUST ME. I'd love to hook up my 360 to that thing.
In November, you and I should head up there and offer NASA $10 to play Gears 2 on this thing...
Awesome. Completely awesome.
And unnecessary...
I suppose they call it a "visualization system" because its easier to get funding for than a "giant screen TV".. wonder if that would work for a spouse?
Probably not going to work with the spouse. NASA really isn't worried about the tax payers nagging about it for weeks, rolling their eyes, and cutting off benefits.
I'm disappointed. It advertises its resolution in the title but doesn't even tell the resolution in the article. One quarter billion pixels doesn't cut it.
They have the screens layed out 16 by 8.
Assuming each screen is a 1080p plasma with a resolution of 1920x1200 we can calculate the overall resolution to be 30720x9600
If it was a 1:1 ratio (it's probably is 4:3 judging by those monitors, but they could stack them any ratio they wanted) then it would be around 16k*16k
You can see from the picture though that the screens are stacked 8 high. With 128 screen that means there must be 16 across. Therefore giving you near enough 16:9
1600x1200x128 = 245,760,000
1920x1200x128 = 294,912,000
My stake is in that they would be running at 1600x1200 as it is closer to 1/4Billion pixels
wow...money sinker....
yeah, I know it's awesome..
Would someone who knows more please clue us all in as to how this is necessary to further NASA's primary objectives? I mean, we went to the moon and back plenty of times without a hyperwall. We've designed, constructed, and built most of the space station without it. The Hubble. Rovers on mars. etc. None needed this. Are there actually projects that got scrapped because of the need for something like this?
Or, maybe more importantly, why was it necessary to ditch the previous one (and the bazillions that went into it). I mean, we're still flying a shuttle that was designed in the 70s - how did hyperwall-1 and it's spent resources meet obsolescence so quickly?
I see this and think: waste of resources (time, effort, and tax money). It does nothing to generate desire in this taxpayer to keep funding what looks more and more like NASA the boondoggle.
We aren't flying the same rockets from the 70's, merely conceptually similar where the manned capsule will set on top of the rocket instead of being attached on the side and cargo will be separate increasing efficiency. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/main/index.html
It is amazingly more than just taking a match to a rocket and watching it go. Still NASA is less than 1% of the federal budget. http://www.space-travel.com/reports/NASAs_space_economy_reaps_windfall_for_humanity_chief_999.html
So, why, for superb imaging and processing of complicated data sets, analysis, and imaging for science and engineering research so we can enhance exploration and progress scientific studies that impact even our economy.
And I thought the one in the Comcast headquarters was big. Things are always bigger in California. Just think they can get Arnie in for the dedication. They can watch all his movies at once.
I can see another dead pixel. . . .