Iowa State upgrades virtual reality room
When a chalkboard just doesn't do the trick anymore, it's time for teachers to bring out the six-sided virtual-reality room. French tech blogger Roland Piquepaille reports that Iowa State University's 10' x 10' x 10' VR room, dubbed "C6" and originally built in 2000, is scheduled to get a $4 million upgrade. Out with the SGI servers, and in with 96 Hewlett-Packard graphics units and 24 Sony digital projectors. When Iowa State re-opens the room in 2007, researchers at the world's most realistic VR room will bathe in 100 million pixels of high-res imagery. One Slashdot reader notes that even in the old C6, the VR world was so vivid that he managed to mistakenly walk into a wall. Contrary to the dreams of other Slashdot readers, however, the room is not meant for playing 3-D World of Warcraft games. Operated by the Virtual Reality Applications Center and funded in part by the Air Force, the room has been used for urban planning applications, data visualization projects in cellular biology, and no doubt a variety of classifeid Air Force applications. Just think of what your PowerPoint presentations would look like in it.
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