Before the construction of the Unversity Visualization and Animation Group (UVAG) laboratory, remote site laboratories need to be built and faculty / graduate students need to be trained. In the next two years this experience at remote CAVE development sites should provide a more accurate account of how we will need to construct the laboratory that will link with the ACITC CAVE, both as a research tool and as a high technology classroom.
There seemed to be some renewed interest in the Sense8 software. Please recall we had Jim Blom from Sense8 plan a visit on Sept 23rd, 1996 but Jack Jarman came instead. The meeting was imformative but the site license seemed a bit high. At that time David Tegarden and Joan McLain-Kark seemed to be the most interested but Joan lost interest. FYI I've linked to the email messages from Sense8 about: 1) VT-site-license and 2) Sense8's Internet Strategy. I have a few folders left over if anyone wants a copy to keep. I also have one copy each of the World Toolkit andWorld Up Training Guides and a Sense8 Demo CD if anyone wants to borrow them. Contact me at kriz@wave.esm.vt.edu.
I was hoping someone would take the lead on a Sense8 site license. It looks like we should buy the site license when a budget for the CAVE workstation laboratory takes shape. DOES ANY ONE WANT TO TAKE THE LEAD ON THE SITE LICENSE? If so, please contact me at kriz@wave.esm.vt.edu so that I can post you as our Sense8 contact for the ACITC-UVAG.
I also changed the floor plan: 1) the CAVE area width was increased to 34 Ft to accomodate mirrors for both front and back walls, and 2) the I-Wall dimensions where changed to create a I-Wall similar to NCSA's I-Wall, See Large Format Floor Plan 2/10/97 on the previous page.
A very recent development came by a conversation with Woody Barfield, who is working with Bob Williges to build the VR capabilities in the existing ISE HIC lab. Woody and I approached Ken Reifsnider and Scott Hurst (Univ. Architect) to see if it is not too late to consider the space marked 306 on the 3rd floor between DD 1.12 and DD 1.13 for ISE's HCI VR lab next to the UVAG lab space. Unlike the UVAG that embraces visulization together with VR technology, the ISE HCI VR lab will focus on VR but yet there is a clear link with UVAG VR activities.
SGI-Equipment Workstations for Labs and Offices Item Quantity Description Cost Est., $ Jan97 1 14 WT5-1P195MX14, Octane workstation, 20" CRT, 1xR10K, 4MB tex. RAM, 256MB RAM, 9GB disk, External CD-ROM, 1 year warranty $ 580,975.50 2 1 R1-H6402-IR64-2, Onyx 2-IRs, 2xR10K, 20" CRT, 9GB disk, 512MB RAM, 1 year warranty System will be used for the I-Wall $ 316,551.00 3 4 Electrohome Video Projects for I-Wall $ 100,000.00 4 10 O2 workstation for offices,1xR10K, 17" CRT, 64MB RAM, 4GB disk $ 165,146.50 _________________________________ SGI Hardware Total: $1,162,673.00 SGI-Software for Lab and Offices 5 24 Varsity for worstations, $500/workstation $ 12,000.00 6 1 Varsity for Onyx2, $1800/workstation $ 1,800.00 Non-SGI Workstation and Software for Lab* 7 2 High-End Pentium Workstations for running Sense8 and other visualization tools unique to Windows95 /NT systems (includes $35K Sense8 site license) $ 80,000.00 __________________________________________ Hardware/Software Total: $1,256,473.00 Furniture 3rd Floor** 8 5 Office suite: desk, chairs, bookshelves, etc. $ 15,000.00 9 1 Conference room: Table, 15 chairs, etc. $ 16,000.00 10 14 Workstation tables with 28 chairs $ 14,400.00 __________________________________ Furnitutre Total: $ 45,400.00 __________________________________________________________________________________* This is a rough estimate on high end workstation that would run Sense8 software and other nonSGI CAVE compatible software. A more accurate estimate will be given once someone at VT has configured such a system and can provide some guidance on what to buy.
** Estimated prices by telephone conversation. More accurate prices will be quoted here after we receive a quote from Harris Furniture.
