MRI: Development of Enodia: A Highly Reconfigurable, HPC-Backed Instrument Enabling Multifaceted Interactive Visualization

该项目开发了一种高度可重构的协作可视化仪器，名为Enodia，旨在支持虚拟现实（VR）和2D内容，以及在该机构和几个合作学院和大学的卫星节点内的多种交互模式（支持非常不同的物理显示星座）。Enodia实现了这样一种理念，即不同的活动需要不同的工具、工作空间和人员的物理安排，以便与屏幕媒介内容进行深入的研究，特别是针对协作和面向通信的研究活动。它建立在突破性的混合有形多点触控和手势交互支持之上，并允许高度多样化的房间级显示几何形状在几分钟/秒内重新配置，灵活地驱动多个校园（外展合作伙伴）不同位置的许多显示器。它还允许以较低的优先级回填充其计算集群。该方法允许在几分钟甚至几秒钟内重新配置锚点可视化环境的几个大型舞台屏幕，以及旗舰和几个区域和全国分布的卫星位置的多屏幕部署（全部由单个计算机集群驱动）。这些配置包括墙壁、角落、建筑模型和房间划分成多个独立的子区域，以支持不同的科学领域和使用环境。优先级、分层的VM方法既支持本地使用，也支持分布式使用，既支持协作，也支持独立。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project, developing a highly reconfigurable collaborative visualization instrument named Enodia, aims to support virtual reality (VR) and 2D content, and multiple interaction modalities (supporting very different physical display constellations) at the institution and within satellite nodes at several collaborating colleges and universities. Enodia operationalizes the idea that different activities call for different physical arrangements of tools, workspaces, and people for intensive research engagement with screen mediated content, especially for collaboration and communication-oriented research activities. It builds upon groundbreaking hybrid tangible multitouch and gestural interaction support and allows highly diverse room-scale display geometries to be reconfigured within minutes/seconds, flexibly driving many displays in diverse locations across several campuses (outreach partners). It also permits its compute cluster to be back-filled at lower priority.The approach allows for several large stage screens of the anchor visualization environment and multiscreen deployments at a flagship and several regionally and nationally distributed satellite locations (all driven by a single computer cluster) to be physically reconfigured in minutes and even seconds. These configurations include wall(s), nooks, architectural mockups, and room partitioning into multiple independent subareas, to support diverse scientific domains and use contexts. The prioritized, layered VM approach supports both local and distributed use, both of collaborative and independent nature.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.