KeckCAVES

The W. M. Keck Center for Active Visualization in the Earth Sciences (KeckCAVES) is a joint project between the UC Davis Department of Geology, IDAV, and the UC Davis Computational Science and Engineering Center (CSE) to bring a state-of-the-art immersive visualization facility to Earth science researchers. KeckCAVES' centerpiece is a four-sided 10'x10'x8' CAVE (three rear-projected walls and front-projected floor), designed and built by Fakespace Systems, Inc. (shown in Figure 1). Besides being a high-end immersive visualization facility, KeckCAVES is also a collaborative environment where computer scientist developers and users from the Earth (or other) sciences come together to develop cutting-edge software for interactive exploration and analysis of complex 3D data. Software developed at KeckCAVES follows a user-driven approach giving scientists tools to extract insight from data, and runs not only on immersive environments like CAVEs, but also on lower-end stereoscopic display systems and even standard desktop and laptop computers. KeckCAVES also follows an open philosophy: software developed for, and tested at, KeckCAVES is made available to the public under open-source software licenses on an ongoing basis.

"Foible-free since 2003"

Figure 1: Photograph of the KeckCAVES CAVE on the third floor of the Earth&Physical Sciences building.

Project Goals

The main goals of this on-going project are to provide cutting-edge visualization technology to earth science researchers.

Provide advanced visualization hardware.
- Four-sided CAVE with head-tracked active stereo and 6-DOF input devices.
- Additional stereo-capable visualization environments installed either at KeckCAVES or participating units.
- Stereo-capable visualization environments installed in classrooms.
Provide advanced visualization software.
- Virtual reality development toolkit to simplify developing visualization applications for all of KeckCAVES' VR environments.
- Visualization applications with a focus on 3D perception using stereoscopic display, and 3D interaction using 6-DOF input devices.
- Multiresolution approaches to guarantee interactive response times for very large data sets.
Provide expertise to develop custom visualization solutions for specific application domain problems.
- Development of custom file processors to adapt existing visualization applications to new data sets.
- Creation of teams consisting of earth science researchers and computer graphics researchers from IDAV to develop custom visualization applications.
- Training of earth science researchers with some computing background to develop simpler visualization applications themselves using the VR toolkit.

Project Status

The KeckCAVES CAVE was installed during April 2005, and has been fully functional since before the installation team left. We are currently in the process of planning and/or installing several additional VR environments at participating units. We already have highly interactive visualization applications for a variety of Earth science problems, and are in the process of developing more. One particular application (RIMS) that was created during the first stages of the KeckCAVES project (before there was a CAVE) is being used heavily for neotectonic mapping in its desktop incarnation, and will be available in the CAVE soon. Another intensively used application is the LiDAR Viewer, a multiresolution viewing and analysis application for unstructured 3D laser scanning data. Our third heavily-used application is 3D Visualizer, a highly-interactive visualization application for 3D gridded data.

To transfer knowledge between our computer science and earth science members, the Department of Geology offered several graduate-level seminars about applying (immersive) visualization to earth science problems, starting in Spring quarter 2006 (co-taught by Louise Kellogg and myself); in these seminar, we adress fundamental visualization techniques, and identify ways to create visualization tools for the participants' particular research problems. We have also started bringing earth science into the computer science curriculum, by using real-life earth science problems as background for programming projects in introductory graphics and visualization courses in the Department of Computer Science.

News

I recently uploaded several videos showing the KeckCAVES VR environment to youtube. However, most of these are aimed to raise awareness of VR in the general public, and hence focus more on games and entertainment than scientific visualization. Here is the list so far:

In October 2006, we helped installing a passive-stereo single-screen visualization environment (essentially a large Geowall) at the Tahoe Center for Environmental Sciences in Incline Village, Nevada, on the Lake Tahoe shore. This environment is used for research, but mostly for public education and outreach. It is powered by a single Macintosh Pro and the Vrui toolkit, and currently runs several KeckCAVES visualization applications. During the Tahoe Center's grand opening on 10/14/2006, we demonstrated the display and the Vrui applications to about 700 invited visitors. Some photographs of the environment are on the pictures page.

In Fall 2007, we collaborated with Della Davidson, a professor in the UC Davis Theatre and Dance Department, to provide stereoscopic 3D animations as backdrop and interactive scenery for a modern dance performance, COLLAPSE (suddenly falling down). We installed a 16'x9' polarized screen as part of the stage and a large-area motion capture system to allow dancers to control the 3D display live and in real time, and handed polarized 3D glasses to the audience. We showed scripted or interactively controlled fly-by animations of LiDAR data, and an interactive 3D painting program controlled live by a dancer on stage. Update: The group won an Izzie ("Isadora Duncan Dance Award") for visual design for the performance.

In Spring 2008, our collaborator Gerald Bawden held a public lecture about his work at CSU Sacramento, and we installed the stereoscopic screen we used during COLLAPSE to show his LiDAR data in true 3D. The audience of about 400 was composed of CSUS faculty, students, and members of the general public.

In Summer 2008, we installed our large stereo screen as part of UC Davis' centennial exhibit at the California State Fair. We used a new recording facility built into our VR software to capture scientists using our applications to analyze their data and explain their research, and played back these recordings in a non-interactive setting. The display was visited by over 16,000 guests during the two weeks of the state fair.

In 2010, KeckCAVES starting collaborating with the UC Davis Health System, specifically with the Center for Health and Technology's Telemedicine Service, to install a low-cost 3D visualization system for education, training, and (in the future) patient care.

Starting in 2011, KeckCAVES teamed up with the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center, the Lawrence Hall of Science, and the ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center to develop displays and hands-on exhibits for informal science education about freshwater lake ecosystems. As part of this project, KeckCAVES assists the partner institutions in installing their own 3D display systems, provides interactive 3D visualization software, and a hands-on augmented reality sandbox exhibit.

In December 2011 and 2012, we took a low-cost stereoscopic display environment based on a 3D TV and a Razer Hydra 6-DOF input device to the joint CIG/KeckCAVES booth at the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting in San Francisco. Hundreds of visitors were able to see pre-recorded demonstration sessions of KeckCAVES software in 3D, and also play with the software live.

Pages in This Section

Applications: An (incomplete and growing) list of Vrui-based applications currently available in KeckCAVES and other immersive environments.
Pictures: Some photographs of the KeckCAVES immersive visualization environment and other Vrui-powered VR environments.
Movies: Videos showing some of the prototypical visualization applications currently under development.