Structural Geology and Tectonics


Harvard University	Faculty of Arts & Science	Dept. Earth & Planetary Sciences

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	The Viz Center - A High-Resolution, Stereo Visualization Facility
	© Photo by Sam Gray, courtesy of Ellenzweig Associates, Inc., Architects		Earth Science research and education increasingly demand the integration of geospatial datasets to observe and model natural phenomena. To meet this challenge, Harvard University and the Structural Geology & Earth Resources Group have developed a new, state-of-the-art immersive Visualization Lab. The facility includes three digital projectors (ChristieDigital Mirage 2000) with active stereo capability displaying on a 23 ft wide cylindrical screen. The system is driven by a new 8 processor, shared memory SGI Onyx with 16GB of RAM and two Infinite Reality 4 multi-channel graphics units (pipes), each with a gigabyte of texture RAM.
	This is a research institute, industry-grade facility, sized for research groups and small class instructional use. It includes the following technical components:

	• 23 x 8 ft cylindrical screen • Three edge-blended, high-resolution active stereo digital ChristieDigital Mirage 2000 projectors • 3D-Perceptions edge-blending, geometry correction and image scaling unit • Multi-image source selection switch • SGI Onyx 2000 with 8xcpu, 16 GB RAM, two IR4 1GB texture memory multi-channel graphics units (pipes) • Display management PC system • Linux and Windows image sources • Stereo Graphics CrystalEyes Stereo Viewing System

	© Photo by C. Guzofski		Our group is always happy to give you a virtual tour through our projects in the Viz Center

Andreas Plesch and Charles Brankman discussing tectonic structures in the Viz Center

If you are interested in learning more about the Viz Center and the SGER computational cluster, or in a tour by our group, please contact Prof. John Shaw (shaw@eps.harvard.edu) or the Viz Center manager George Planansky (617-496-1386 or george_planansky at harvard.edu).

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