Episode 82: The Evolution of Visualization: How Immersive Tech is Reshaping Wyoming Research with Kyle Summerfield

Please tell our listeners a bit about yourself.

Sure.

So I'm a Wyoming native grew up here in Laramie.

I'm also a UW alumni out of our fine arts program.

I've been with SCR and the visualization center for, I think about 12 years, in various capacities, starting as an intern, then as our lead developer, and then now as our manager.

All right, so you've been with the Visualization Center for a while now.

And for listeners who might not be familiar, what did the center's early footprint look like? Maybe you can paint a picture of what it was like working with Wyoming's only four walled 3D cave or cave automatic virtual environment back then.

Sure.

So yeah, CAVE is a fun recursive acronym that contains its own name.

So it doesn't really tell you much about what that technology is.

And really, it's a combination of several different technologies.

So it is a set of rear projected screens in our case.

So we had eight total projectors across three walls and a floor.

Those are paired with a tracking system that keeps track of a user's head position and also a proxy for their hand and in our case, a wand.

And then it also uses stereoscopic glasses to give you that sense of 3D depth and scale.

It's useful for several things.

So anytime you need to explore something where scale is important or relative physical positioning in space is important, devices like the CAVE and now emerging technologies like virtual reality or augmented reality are really good at getting that information across that would be lost in a traditional 2D environment.

The footprint for the Viz Center started as just kind of the cave room, which was purpose-built around that installation when the building was constructed, and then the small laboratory that adjoins that room.

We have since expanded down the hall.

We have a computer lab where our internship program and short courses are delivered, and then an attached room for our GIS and remote sensing lab.

Yeah, you and your team have really grown this, this program over the years.

So what were the limitations of that early hardware compared to the vision you had for the center?

Well, as I described, when talking about the cave, it was a complex sort of combination of different technologies.

So we had to maintain a tracking system, we had had to maintain and calibrate eight projectors all the time, there was extreme compute requirements for that it had a dedicated compute node and then a separate rendering node.

So, the technology was simultaneously very complex and also limited in its capability.

Please tell our listeners a bit about yourself.

Sure.

So I'm a Wyoming native grew up here in Laramie.

I'm also a UW alumni out of our fine arts program.

I've been with SCR and the visualization center for, I think about 12 years, in various capacities, starting as an intern, then as our lead developer, and then now as our manager.

All right, so you've been with the Visualization Center for a while now.

And for listeners who might not be familiar, what did the center's early footprint look like? Maybe you can paint a picture of what it was like working with Wyoming's only four walled 3D cave or cave automatic virtual environment back then.

Sure.

So yeah, CAVE is a fun recursive acronym that contains its own name.

So it doesn't really tell you much about what that technology is.

And really, it's a combination of several different technologies.

So it is a set of rear projected screens in our case.

So we had eight total projectors across three walls and a floor.

Those are paired with a tracking system that keeps track of a user's head position and also a proxy for their hand and in our case, a wand.

And then it also uses stereoscopic glasses to give you that sense of 3D depth and scale.

It's useful for several things.

So anytime you need to explore something where scale is important or relative physical positioning in space is important, devices like the CAVE and now emerging technologies like virtual reality or augmented reality are really good at getting that information across that would be lost in a traditional 2D environment.

The footprint for the Viz Center started as just kind of the cave room, which was purpose-built around that installation when the building was constructed, and then the small laboratory that adjoins that room.

We have since expanded down the hall.

We have a computer lab where our internship program and short courses are delivered, and then an attached room for our GIS and remote sensing lab.

Yeah, you and your team have really grown this, this program over the years.

So what were the limitations of that early hardware compared to the vision you had for the center?

Well, as I described, when talking about the cave, it was a complex sort of combination of different technologies.

So we had to maintain a tracking system, we had had to maintain and calibrate eight projectors all the time, there was extreme compute requirements for that it had a dedicated compute node and then a separate rendering node.

So, the technology was simultaneously very complex and also limited in its capability.