(from NAI proposal) The KeckCAVES centerpiece is a four-sided FakeSpace CAVE, an immersive visualization environment consisting of three 10' x 8' walls and a 10' x 8' floor. Stereoscopic images are projected onto all four surfaces using one 3-chip DLP projector (Christie Mirage S+4K) each. The images are generated in such a way that a user perceives a seamless three-dimensional environment that can be explored by manipulating data within the 10' x 10' x 8' CAVE. A wireless 3D position tracking system (Intersense IS-900) synchronizes the 3D display with the position and orientation of a user's head and allows him or her to interact with the virtual environment in an intuitive and efficient fashion using a position-tracked handheld "wand" with six buttons and a joystick, data gloves, and other devices.

The CAVE is driven by a cluster of 6 high-end graphics workstations running Red Hat Linux and a custom virtual reality operating system called <VRUI: link to software section on VRUI>. A "head node" with two AMD Opteron CPUs at 2.2 GHz and 4GB of main memory controls the system, while the images for the projection are generated by four "render nodes," each with an AMD Athlon 64 CPU at 2.2 GHz, 2GB of main memory, and an Nvidia Quadro FX 4400G 3D graphics card. An additional "audio node" generates spatial sound using four speakers mounted at the corners of the CAVE enclosure. The cluster nodes are connected using Gigabit Ethernet, and the entire system is connected to the high-performance computing systems offered by Center for Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) and Institute for Data Analysis and Visualization (IDAV) with an Internet2 link.