“The Forty Year Path to the 2016 Filmatic Festival”

Opening Talk

Filmatic Festival

Calit2’s Qualcomm Institute

May 7, 2016

Dr. Larry Smarr

Director, California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology;

Harry E. Gruber Professor,

Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering

Jacobs School of Engineering, UCSD

Four Themes Led to the Filmatic Festival:

• Teaming Artists and Scientists with Technologists• Computer Graphics and Digital Cinema• Virtual Reality• Tele-Collaboration

Artist and physicist Daniel Sandin (left) and computer scientist Tom DeFanti (right) founded the UIC Circle Graphics Habitat

(later renamed the Electronic Visualization Laboratory) in 1973.

Calit2’s Computer Graphics and Virtual Reality Traces Its Roots Back 40 Years

One of the First Computer Animations Used in a Feature Film Was Created at the UIC Habitat

Larry Cuba used programming language written and developed by fellow computer scientist Thomas DeFanti as a basis for producing

the 3-D computer graphics for Star Wars.http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2013/05/23/star-wars-connection

Scene from Star Wars (1976) Lucasfilm

Lucasfilm Created Industrial Light and Magic and Pixar

Creating Death Star on PDP-11 in Habitat

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) Was Founded in 1985

NCSA Integrated Scientific Visualization with Supercomputing

Simulation and Visualization of a Severe Thunderstorm-Scale Tens of Kilometers

Wilhelmson, Arrott, et al.

Thunderstorm Video Debuted at SIGGRAPH 1989

From Scientific Visualization of Supercomputing Science to Movie Special Effects

http://access.ncsa.uiuc.edu/http://movies.warnerbros.com/twister

www.jurassicpark.com; www.jamescameron.orgwww.cinemenium.com/perfectstorm/

NCSA 1987

1993

1996

2000

Computer GraphicsFrom NCSA to ILM

1991

Stefen Fangmeier

• Televisualization:– Telepresence– Remote Interactive

Visual Supercomputing

– Multi-disciplinary Scientific Visualization

A Simulation of Shared Physical/Virtual Collaboration: Using Analog Communications to Prototype the Digital Future

“We’re using satellite technology…to demowhat It might be like to have high-speed fiber-optic links between advanced computers in two different geographic locations.”― Al Gore, Senator

Chair, US Senate Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space

Illinois

Boston

SIGGRAPH 1989

“What we really have to do is eliminate distance between individuals who want to interact with other people and with other computers.”― Larry Smarr, Director, NCSA

Boston

Smarr, Haber, Cox

“It’s the real start of humans being able to immerse themselves inside the brains of computers―seeing what the computers are seeing.”― Larry Smarr, Director,

National Center for Supercomputing Applications, UIUC

“See things you’ve never seen before.”― Tom DeFanti, Director, Electronic Visualization Laboratory, UIC

“Virtual prototyping of new products, from small to large.”― Rick Stevens, Director, Math and Computer

Science Division, Argonne National Lab

“Next year―SuperVROOM…Get rid of the Machine Farm and put gigabit networks in place to talk to computers at remote sites―a whole new level of interaction and communication.”― Maxine Brown, Associate Director,

Electronic Visualization Laboratory, UIC

SIGGRAPH 1994Introducing the CAVE Virtual Reality Room

Post-Euclidean Walkabout George Francis, NCSA, UIUCwww.math.uiuc.edu/~gfrancis/

General MotorsResearch

UIC

www.evl.uic.edu/EVL/VROOM/HTML/OTHER/HomePage.html

Source: Maxine Brown

Caterpillar / NCSA: Distributed Virtual Reality for Global-Scale Collaborative Prototyping

Real Time Linked Virtual Reality and Audio-Video Between NCSA, Peoria, Houston, and Germany

www.sv.vt.edu/future/vt-cave/apps/CatDistVR/DVR.html1996

Alliance 1997: Collaborative Video Productionvia Tele-Immersion and Virtual Director

Alliance Project Linking CAVE, ImmersaDesk, Power Wall, and Workstation

UIC Donna Cox, Robert Patterson, Stuart Levy, NCSA Virtual Director Team

Glenn Wheless, Old Dominion Univ.

Alliance Application TechnologiesEnvironmental Hydrology Team

2005: Two New Calit2 Buildings Provide New Laboratories for “Living in the Future”

• “Convergence” Laboratory Facilities– Nanotech, BioMEMS, Chips, Radio, Photonics– Virtual Reality, Digital Cinema, HDTV, Gaming

• ~ 1000 Researchers in Two Buildings– Linked via Dedicated Optical Networks

UC Irvinewww.calit2.net

Preparing for a World in Which Distance is Eliminated…

$100M From State for New Facilities

Calit2 Has Facilitated Deep Interactions With the Digital Arts and Humanities on Both Campuses

“Researchers Look to Create a Synthesis of Art and Science

for the 21st Century”

By John MarkoffNYTimes November 5, 2005

Ruth West, UCSD “Ecce Homology”

SPECFLIC 1.0 – A Speculative Distributed Social Cinema by Adrienne Jenik

Calit2@UCIeMedia Studio:

Interactive TelepresenceDance/Media Performances

Calit2@UCSD Designed Three ExperimentalNew Media Arts Spaces into Atkinson Hall

New Media Arts Wing

Calit2@UCSD Multipurpose Room—A “Black Box” Theatre Space

• 100-seat Reconfigurable Space• Performances/Seminars

Calit2 3D Immersive StarCAVE OptIPortal:Enables Exploration of Blended Reality

Cluster with 30 Nvidia 5600 cards-60 GB Texture Memory

Source: Tom DeFanti, Greg Dawe, Calit2

Connected at 50 Gb/s to UCSD Campus Switch

30 HD Projectors!

15 Meyer Sound Speakers + Subwoofer

Passive Polarization--Optimized the

Polarization Separation and Minimized Attenuation

Maxine Brown and Tom DeFanti, iGrid2005 Co-Chairs

Larry Smarr and Ramesh Rao, Calit2 Hosts

First Trans-Pacific Super High Definition Telepresence Meeting Using Digital Cinema 4K Streams

Keio University President Anzai

UCSD Chancellor Fox

Lays Technical Basis for

Global Digital Cinema

Sony NTT SGI

Streaming 4K with JPEG 2000 Compression ½ gigabit/sec

100 Times the Resolution

of YouTube!

Calit2@UCSD Auditorium

First Tri-Continental Premier of a Streamed 4K Feature Film With Global HD Discussion

San Paulo, Brazil Auditorium

Keio Univ., Japan Calit2@UCSD

4K Transmission Over 10Gbps--4 HD Projections from One 4K Projector

4K Film Director, Beto Souza

Source: Sheldon Brown, CRCA, Calit2

August 2009

Tele-Collaboration for Audio Post-ProductionRealtime Picture & Sound Editing Synchronized Over IP

Skywalker Sound@Marin Calit2@San Diego

Crossing Boundaries 2012-Co-Taught Interdisciplinary Graduate Class

27 graduate students, (playwrights, designers, directors, actors, musicians, filmmakers, performance artists, stage managers, engineers, and theatre scholars)

Source: Shahrokh Yadegari, Dept. of Theatre and Dance2004 Calit2 Professor of Arts and Humanities

Co-Taught by Alan Burrett, Robert Castro, Lisa Porter, Victoria Petrovich and Shahrokh Yadegari

Performances in Calit2 VROOM Dec 2012

Becoming Dragon-A Mixed Reality, Durational PerformanceCombining Virtual Reality, Motion Capture, Second Life

Source: Micha Cárdenas, CRCA, Calit2

365 hours, from December 1-17th, 2008

Artist Dan Ambrosi Teams with Software Experts to Create Dreamscapes-Sees His Art For the 1st Time at QI

April 2016

The WAVE (2013) ~$400,00035 Megapixels/Eye $0.010/Pixel

WAVE VR Display 7 High by 5 Wide HD Panels 125,000 Cores (50 Nvidia 780s), 200TF

WAVE Cluster20x40Gbps

Collaboration Between EVL’s CAVE2 andCalit2’s VROOM Over 10Gbps Optical Fiber

EVL

Calit2

Source: NTT Sponsored ON*VECTOR Workshop at Calit2 March 6, 2013

Qualcomm Institute Has a Variety of Projects with HMD VR

• Oculus Rift for viewing MR and CT scans in 3D

• Using In-House Developed Direct Volume Rendering Algorithm, Optimized for VR

• Drone Controlled by Head Motion with Oculus Rift

• Video (mono) Streamed Live to HMD

VR Rock Climbing

Source: Jurgen Schulze, Calit2’s QI

UC San Diego Undergraduate VR Laboratoryin Computer Science and Engineering Building

• ~40 graphics Workstations with HMDs• Viewers for Smart Phones• Walk Around VR with HTC Vive• Two 80” 4k Displays

– Group VR Viewing

– Discussions, Tutoring

• Ready by Fall Quarter 2016

Why Would a Social Network CompanyBuy a Consumer Virtual Reality Company?

"We're working on VR because I think it's the next major

computing and communication platform after phones,“

-Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEOJuly 1, 2015