Falko Kuester

CGLX: A Scalable, High-Performance Visualization Framework for Networked Display Environments

The Cross Platform Cluster Graphics Library (CGLX) is a flexible and transparent OpenGL-based graphics framework for distributed, high-performance visualization systems. CGLX allows OpenGL based applications to utilize massively scalable visualization clusters such as multiprojector or high-resolution tiled display environments and to maximize the achievable performance and resolution. The framework features a programming interface for hardware-accelerated rendering of OpenGL applications on visualization clusters, mimicking a GLUT-like (OpenGL-Utility-Toolkit) interface to enable smooth translation of single-node applications to distributed parallel rendering applications. CGLX provides a unified, scalable, distributed OpenGL context to the user by intercepting and manipulating certain OpenGL directives. CGLXs interception mechanism, in combination with the core functionality for users to register callbacks, enables this framework to manage a visualization grid without additional implementation requirements to the user. Although CGLX grants access to its core engine, allowing users to change its default behavior, general development can occur in the context of a standalone desktop. The framework provides an easy-to-use graphical user interface (GUI) and tools to test, setup, and configure a visualization cluster. This paper describes CGLXs architecture, tools, and systems components. We present performance and scalability tests with different types of applications, and we compare the results with a Chromium-based approach.

Dealing with Archaeology's Data Avalanche

The increasing availability and relatively low cost of digital data collection technologies have created a data avalanche for archaeologists. In this paper, we discuss a system that integrates geographic information system (GlS)-based artifact and material sample data sets with massive point clouds within an interactive visual analysis environment. Our system lets researchers revisit archeological sites virtually, with the entirety of the captured record accessible for exploration.

CGLXTouch: A multi-user multi-touch approach for ultra-high-resolution collaborative workspaces

This paper presents an approach for empowering collaborative workspaces through ultra-high resolution tiled display environments concurrently interfaced with multiple multi-touch devices. Multi-touch table devices are supported along with portable multi-touch tablet and phone devices, which can be added to and removed from the system on the fly. Events from these devices are tagged with a device identifier and are synchronized with the distributed display environment, enabling multi-user support. As many portable devices are not equipped to render content directly, a remotely scene is streamed in. The presented approach scales for large numbers of devices, providing access to a multitude of hands-on techniques for collaborative data analysis.

Giga-stack: A method for visualizing giga-pixel layered imagery on massively tiled displays

In this paper, we present a technique for the interactive visualization and interrogation of multi-dimensional giga-pixel imagery. Co-registered image layers representing discrete spectral wavelengths or temporal information can be seamlessly displayed and fused. Users can freely pan and zoom, while swiftly transitioning through data layers, enabling intuitive analysis of massive multi-spectral or time-varying records. A data resource aware display paradigm is introduced which progressively and adaptively loads data from remote network attached storage devices. The technique is specifically designed to work with scalable, high-resolution, massively tiled display environments. By displaying hundreds of mega-pixels worth of visual information all at once, several users can simultaneously compare and contrast complex data layers in a collaborative environment.

Visualization of high-resolution image collections on large tiled display walls

This paper introduces an approach to interactively visualize a large collection of high-resolution images in large-scale tiled display environments. Our approach fully utilizes the distributed computing and rendering capabilities of visualization clusters that are driving tiled display walls. A seamless and unified workspace spanning across the entire wall is provided, while view dependent resource management strategies support smooth and fully interactive data analysis of a collection of images. Interactive image filtering and graphing techniques are presented, allowing features in individual images and patterns in image sets to be visualized on the fly. The provided case studies show that the presented approach can scale well beyond terapixel-scale visualization while providing highly responsive interactive environments.

ARtifact: Tablet-Based Augmented Reality for Interactive Analysis of Cultural Artifacts

To ensure the preservation of cultural heritage, artifacts such as paintings must be analyzed to diagnose physical frailties that could result in permanent damage. Advancements in digital imaging techniques and computer-aided analysis have greatly aided in such diagnoses but can limit the ability to work directly with the artifact in the field. This paper presents the implementation and application of ARtifact, a tablet-based augmented reality system that enables on-site visual analysis of the artifact in question. Utilizing real-time tracking of the artifact under observation, a user interacting with the tablet can study various layers of data registered with the physical object in situ. Theses layers, representing data acquired through various imaging modalities such as infrared thermography and ultraviolet fluorescence, provide the user with an augmented view of the artifact to aid in on-site diagnosis and restoration. Intuitive interaction techniques further enable targeted analysis of artifact-related data. We present a case study utilizing our tablet system to analyze a 16th century Italian hall and highlight the benefits of our approach.

Virtual Bounds: a teleoperated mixed reality

This paper introduces a mixed reality workspace that allows users to combine physical and computer-generated artifacts, and to control and simulate them within one fused world. All interactions are captured, monitored, modeled and represented with pseudo-real world physics. The objective of the presented research is to create a novel system in which the virtual and physical world would have a symbiotic relationship. In this type of system, virtual objects can impose forces on the physical world and physical world objects can impose forces on the virtual world. Virtual Bounds is an exploratory study allowing a physical probe to navigate a virtual world while observing constraints, forces, and interactions from both worlds. This scenario provides the user with the ability to create a virtual environment and to learn to operate real-life probes through its virtual terrain.

Terrestrial laser scanning (LiDAR) as a means of digital documentation in rescue archaeology: Two examples from the Faynan of Jordan

Traditional rescue archaeology has focused on the rapid excavation or the cursory documentation of endangered archaeological sites, typically in urban settings. However, when the archaeologist is in remote field situations and encounters an endangered site or a recently exposed robbers pit, little documentation is typically possible in the short time available to pursue such fortuitous projects. This leads to the loss of a significant amount of potentially useful cultural heritage data. With the advent of new point cloud technologies, more data can now be collected to preserve endangered sites prior to, or even during, their destruction. Over the 2011 field season of the University of California, San Diegos (UCSDs) Edom Lowlands Regional Project (ELRAP) in the Wadi Faynan of Jordan, two day long rescue archaeology projects, at Khirbat Faynan and Umm al-Amad, were undertaken utilizing terrestrial Light Detecting and Ranging (LiDAR) as their primary documentation tool. Such rapid documentation was possible with the aid of several modifications to the standard laser scanning equipment, which not only allowed the equipment access to the tight spaces these projects entailed, but required that fewer scans be taken than with traditional laser scanning. The use of free-station scanning also significantly decreased the amount of time needed for data capture in the field. However this increased the amount of post-processing and potential human registration error. The data sets created via “Rescue LiDAR” now preserve a detailed record of these two sites. This data would have been lost to posterity had rapid and adaptable scanning technology not been available.

AirGSM: An unmanned, flying GSM cellular base station for flexible field communications

We present a functional implementation of a lightweight GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) cellular base station and core network based on open-source software, coupled with a simple and rapidly deployable autonomous aerial vehicle for establishing field communications in the absence of commercial service. We advocate the utility of mobile GSM cellular devices for communication and data acquisition in many types of fieldwork, posing advantages in functionality over conventional long-range push-to-talk radios and advantages in size over laptop type data terminals. We argue that alternative radio communications technologies inevitably fail to simultaneously optimize cost, power management, range, integration, and spectral efficiency compared to the GSM radio interface.

DIGI-vis: Distributed interactive geospatial information visualization

Geospatial information systems provide an abundance of information for researchers and scientists. Unfortunately this type of data can usually only be analyzed a few megapixels at a time, giving researchers a very narrow view into these voluminous data sets. We propose a distributed data gathering and visualization system that allows researchers to view these data at hundreds of megapixels simultaneously. This system allows scientists to view real-time geospatial information at unprecedented levels expediting analysis, interrogation, and discovery.