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]
