FACILITIES - UrbanDine

World Class Facilities

SPATIALIZATION LAB
A dark, cave-like space with high walls and rows of audio mixing boards, the Audio Spatialization Laboratory (or Spat Lab, for short) is ground zero for the Qualcomm Institute’s Sonic Arts R&D group, directed by UCSD music professor Peter Otto. The group does much of its development work in audio spatialization and sonification in the lab, which has been one of the institute’s signature labs devoted to audio research and music composition. “Our focus is on auditory realism,” says Otto. “We are able to simulate, emulate, reproduce or predict the auditory signature of a particular acoustic or architectural environment, or spatially isolating or highlighting particular sound sources while suppressing others.”

IMMERSIVE VISUALIZATION LAB
The Immersive Visualization Lab (IVL) is home to a number of advanced virtual-reality devices, some of them still in development. The StarCAVE 360-degree, virtual reality environment is the principal system of potential use by artists seeking to showcase 3D VR multimedia. The room operates at a combined resolution of over 68 million pixels - 34 million per eye - distributed over 15 rear-projected walls and two floor screens. Each side of the pentagon-shaped room has three stacked screens, with the bottom and top screens titled inward by 15 degrees to increase the feeling of immersion (while also reducing the ghosting, or ‘seeing double’, that bedevils VR systems). Visuals are rear-projected on each screen with two HD projectors to permit HD in 3D. Two separate projectors beam 3D imagery on the room’s floor. Each pair of projectors is powered by a high-end, quad-core PC running on Linux, with dual graphics processing units and dual network cards to achieve gigabit Ethernet or 10GigE networking. Thus, the StarCAVE supports 20/40 vision and the images are very high contrast, thanks to the room’s unique shape and special screens that allow viewers to use 3D polarizing glasses. Adding to the virtual reality in the StarCAVE is the surround sound system, which harnesses recent advances in wave field synthesis – a way to maximize the perception of many channels of sound emanating from different sides of the room. Calit2 also worked closely with Meyer Sound, Inc., to customize the installation of three arrays of five conventional high-quality speakers to provide 5.1 surround sound or up to 15 channels of discreet audio diffusion (with a subwoofer channel built into the floor structure).

PERFORMATIVE COMPUTING
Equipment currently available in the Performative Computing Lab includes a projection system; a 24-channel analog mixing console; and an 8.1 surround speaker system.

CALIT2 THEATER
The Calit2 Theater is a multipurpose room and ‘Black Box’ space available for research, exhibitions or events. It is a 2-story, reconfigurable space with reconfigurable risers and movable seating for up to 90 people. Equipment includes a multi-channel Meyer Cinema Surround Sound system, a Sony SKRD-R110 4K projector and a fully digital controlled lighting with smart light fixtures. The Theater also features Vroom (short for “Virtual room”), a large-scale, tiled visualization display system covering one wall of the Black Box space. Vroom is a next-generation, reconfigurable tiled display environment that features four rows of eight displays for a total of 32 narrow-bezel NEC LCD displays, each with a 55" screen diagonal. The displays have full HD resolution (1920x1080 pixels), adding up to 66 million pixels on the entire wall (15,360 x 4,320 pixels). Vroom also supports multi-channel audio, and uses a multi-camera optical tracking system from Vicon. All displays have been attached in 2x2 patterns to mounting structures, which are either installed in movable containers (OptiPortables) or suspended from above. The displays are driven by 16 rendering PCs running Linux, each with dual Nvidia Geforce 580 graphics cards. Additionally, there are three separate control PCs (head nodes), each of them set up for one of the three supported software environments, Mediacommons, CalVR and SAGE. For more information on the Calit2 Theater’s state-of-the-art capabilities, click here. A floor plan for the theater is here. Performance video in front of the Vroom display can be seen here (starting at 14:00).

QUALCOMM AUDITORIUM
The digital-cinema-equipped Calit2 Auditorium is a state-of-the-art theater/conference facility with 200 comfortable seats and the latest in communications technologies. Each seat has AC power and 1 Gb/s Ethernet jacks. This dual production-and-research facility allows it to be used for anything from standard PowerPoint presentations and HD video screenings, to innovative visual and performance art, or ultra-high-resolution (4K) digital cinema and videoconferencing. The hall has a 12.1 Mayer Cinema multichannel surround-sound system, an 18x32-foot screen, and Sony SXRD-S110 projector for 4K video. The 4K projector provides 4,096 x 2160 pixels, or 8 megapixels per frame – four times the resolution of HDTV. For 4K playback, the Sony SXRD projector is driven by an NTT hardware codec for JPEG 2000; or a custom-built PC with top-of-the-line graphics cards. The auditorium also features: a built-in, four-camera HD recording and webcasting system; theatrical light board; conventional 1600x1200-pixel Christie projector; 16-channel digital audio console and a remote-control system by Crestron, which allows presenters to connect their laptops to control video and audio directly from the podium. For full details on equipment and technical specs available for performances in the Calit2 Auditorium, click here. Detailed specs are here, and a floor plan of the two-story space is here.