Multiway tele-immersion at Supercomputing 97

Tele-immersion-the union of networked virtual reality (VR) and video to support collaboration among scientists, engineers, and educators-is an important element in the computing information infrastructure envisioned by the National Computational Science Alliance. Tele-immersion will let people from around the world casually enter a shared virtual environment (VE), manipulate that environment-whether a scientific simulation or a design space-and engage in discourse with their collaborators. The Alliance consists of more than 50 universities and government institutions led by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Supercomputing 97 provided an excellent opportunity to connect several of the Alliance partners together and experiment with the kind of shared interaction my colleagues and I will be focusing on in the next few years. Rather than show a tele-immersion demo at Supercomputing, we wanted to use the conference as an opportunity to do research on the show floor.