Enabling multi-user interaction in large high-resolution distributed environments

As the amount and the resolution of collected scientific data increase, scientists are realizing the potential benefits that large high-resolution displays can have in assimilating this incoming data. Often this data has to be processed on powerful remote computing and storage resources, converted to high-resolution digital media and yet visualized on a local tiled-display. This is the basic premise behind the OptIPuter model. While the streaming middleware to enable this kind of work exists and the optical networking infrastructure is becoming more widely available, enabling multi-user interaction in such environments is still a challenge. In this paper, we present an interaction system we developed to support collaborative work on large high-resolution displays using multiple interaction devices and scalable, distributed user interface widgets. This system allows multiple users to simultaneously interact with local or remote data, media and applications, through a variety of physical interaction devices on large high-resolution displays. Finally, we present our experiences with using the system over the past two years. Most importantly, having an actual working system based on the OptIPuter model allows us to focus our research efforts to better understand how to make such high-resolution environments more user-friendly and usable in true real-world collaborative scenarios as opposed to constrained laboratory settings. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.