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Interactive tabletops and surfaces (ITSs) provide rich opportunities for data visualization and analysis and consequently are used increasingly in such settings. A research agenda of some of the most pressing challenges related to visualization on ITSs emerged from discussions with researchers and practitioners in human-computer interaction, computer-supported collaborative work, and a variety of visualization fields at the 2011 Workshop on Data Exploration for Interactive Surfaces (Dexis 2011). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Media facades (often characterized as a building's digital skin) are public displays that substitute dynamic details and information for usually static structures. SMSlingshot is a media facade system at the confluence of art, architecture, and technology design in the context of urban human-computer interaction. It represents a participative approach to public displays that enlivens public spaces and fosters civic and social dialogue as an alternative to advertising and service-oriented information displays. Observations from SMSlingshot's implementation at festival exhibitions provide insight into the roles of scale, distance, and the spatial situation of media facade contexts. The lessons learned apply to most public-display situations and will be useful for designers and developers of this new medium in urban spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Transitioning from bespoke, single-purpose public displays to generic, multipurpose ones entails a number of research challenges. One such challenge is understanding how to group and present available applications to users and what effect this grouping has on application use. This study of an iterative, longitudinal deployment of a multipurpose public display examines two mechanisms that help users find the available applications: a quick-launch menu and a browsable application directory. Using the measures of relative and absolute utility, the study reveals these mechanisms' complex effects on application usage. It also addresses whether a public display should promote popular or unpopular applications. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the Center for Advanced Visualization, Computation, and Modelling, which is a laboratory that brought online a Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE) immersive display in mid-2005. CAVE was established by the Desert Research Institute (DRI) to promote DRI's mover into interactive, large scale, 3-dimensional visualization of the data analysis concerning open-source tools for immersive environmental visualization and other environmental research issues. A four-sided, CAVE-like, Fakespace FLEX immersive display system, a Visbox single-screen immersive display, and a 44 central processing unit with 160 Gbytes of random access memory SGI Altix 3700 Symmetric Multiprocessor system.

The article reiterates the characteristics that make the rainbow color map a poor choice by providing examples that clearly illustrate these deficiencies even on simple data sets as well as recommends better color maps for several categories of display. Intricately, the paper discusses the rainbow color map's characteristics of confusing the viewer, obscuring data, and actively misleading interpretation. The author concludes that rainbow color map hinders the purpose of visualization of effectively conveying information to human viewers.

The article focuses on challenges for the successful development of large-display groupware applications. Large groupware displays can be viewed from a greater distance and can be viewed by multiple users. They are generally located in shared space. They are usually regarded as group resources. There are various examples of large-display groupware application. Carnegie Mellon University's Messy Board system helps users interacting with desktop clients to project various media items to a large projected display in shared workplace. Plasma Poster is also a large-display groupware, developed and deployed at FX Palo Alto Laboratory. It is an electronic bulletin board that lets users to post and view item of interest on large displays in shared spaces in the work environment. For developing these large-display groupware, designers should integrate systems into existing workgroup interactions rather than suggesting new types of information sharing systems. The design of a large-display groupware should be such that users would be able to interact successfully and easily with the system easily if they have to adopt to the system into their normal tasks.

The article focuses on the relevance of visual display for users and experts views about the display system. Visualization research generates beautiful images and impressive interactive systems. But if the interaction is awkward or does not carefully considered users' needs, even the most well-intentioned and technically developed visual display will be ineffective. Formal laboratory user studies can effectively evaluate visualizations. Designing and running a controlled experiment requires substantial time and resources. A clear objective, controlled laboratory setting, and strict limited tasks are also essential. Researchers have successfully used alternative evaluation techniques in human-computer interaction, including focus groups, field studies, and expert reviews. These methods tend to produce qualitative results and require fewer participants than controlled experiments. While expert reviews can provide quick and valuable insight into usability problems, they should not be used exclusively and should not replace user studies. Expert reviews often identify different problems than tests with end users and could miss important usability issues. Furthermore, some of the so-called problems found by experts might not present difficulties for end users. Results of an expert review will depend on experts' qualifications, and opinions of experts are subjective and can vary. INSET: Conducting a Heuristic Evaluation..

The article discusses issues related to the large-display user experience. There are two basic approaches to providing a large-display experience. Wall-sized displays typically offer seamless display surfaces that are created using multiple tiled projectors. These systems commonly use touch or pen input. Large desktop displays are configurations with seams between the monitors caused by the monitor bezels. These systems commonly use keyboard and mouse for input. Each window on a computer desktop provides a view into some information. Although users can now manipulate multiple windows, being able to spatially arrange smaller window regions might help them perform certain tasks more efficiently. This is particularly important on large displays, where the target windows might be far apart. WinCuts is a novel interaction technique that lets users replicate arbitrary regions of existing windows into independent windows. WinCut is a live view of a source window region that users can interact with. INSET: Related Work in Large-Display Usability..

The article reports on the development of the storage bin mobile storage mechanism, which combines the space-preserving features of existing peripheral storage mechanisms with the capability to relocate stored items in the workspace. While interest in tabletop displays began over a decade ago, recent technological advances have increased the feasibility of these displays and fueled renewed interest in this research direction. While increasing the size of the display surface offers more space for collaborative tasks, standard software interfaces that place items at the display's edges can cause these items to be physically difficult to reach. Altering the display further by placing it horizontally on a tabletop introduces orientation issues because people can approach the display from different sides. Textual information can be difficult to read when viewed upside down or at an angle. A storage bin's mobility and adjustability in size and shape allow people to share resources and transition between activities. Moving a storage bin allows a person to bring a collection of stored items in and out of the current focus of activity.

The article presents information on the Digital Vision Touch (DViT) system that uses smart complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) cameras in the corners of a large display to look along the display's surface and determine the location of an object in front of, or in contact with, the display. DViT is a touch-enabling technology with this capability and facilitates human-computer interaction in a natural way. The smart cameras use a 2185M digital signal processor from analog devices to collect and process information from a National Semiconductors CMOS camera sensor. The system architecture is bandwidth friendly, because of a staged reduction from the camera to the computer. Large-format, high-resolution displays are increasingly important in scientific and educational institutions. Such displays are commonly constructed from projector arrays. The compelling visuals, information density, and high resolution make them ideal for a variety of applications. INSET: Related Work..

The article focuses on the canvas portal framework that facilitates the development of alternative view-based space-management techniques on large displays. In any display, portions or an infinitely large virtual canvas can be invisible to the user. On desktop-scale displays, various window and desktop-management schemes let users effectively manage the available display area's space and layout. Space and layout management issues are different for large-scale displays. Although the displays can simultaneously display more data, some of it will be outside the user's focal visual field. Canvas portals have four primary elements that users can interactively manipulate. The portal area is the graphical representation of the canvas portal within which interaction occurs and can exist on the main display or on entirely separate devices such as PDAS or laptops. The portal area can have different shapes and sizes, and users can reposition it as desired. The portal area's shape is typically closely related to that of the focal area, such that the mappings between them are simple and easily understood.

The article reports on the development of various techniques, software tools, and applications for large-scale display systems. To make the 24-projector display system easy to use, tools to align, color balance, and manage tiled display systems have been developed. Managing a large-scale display wall built with commodity components can be time consuming because it involves many resources, including numerous projectors, computers, and software tools. The tiled-display management tools, which are called DwallGUI, coordinate all resources in a display wall system. DwallGUI consists of a server running on each of the display cluster nodes and a client running on the console PC. A large-scale multiprojector display system creates the possibility of showing high-resolution and high-quality video. This is especially desirable for the playback of detailed scientific visualization and simulation results, immersive telepresence, VR, digital cinema, and other entertainment applications.

The article highlights the subtle but important interplay between large-display technologies, interior design, and social and corporate dynamics, with reference to the designing of Alias Visualization Studio or the VizStudio, a unique meeting facility that makes use of large-display technology to support digital visual communication and collaboration with corporate clients, future customers, employees, and corporate partners. To enter or leave the Viz Studio, the user is presented with a sense of drama to transition and signal the beginning and, when leaving, the end of the experience. The VizStudio supports multiple groups working and meeting at the same time but so far, in practice, groups opt to reserve the entire space instead of subareas. Due to privacy and sensitivity issues, people want to know who is hearing and seeing the information being presented and discussed. The Viz Studio experience enlivens the senses and supports long periods of creative work. This is achieved through the design of both the physical space and user experience.

This article focuses on several techniques that have been discovered from time to time to given an illusion of 3-dimensional (3D) images. Shutter glasses, polarized glasses, and head-mounted displays (HMDs) have become common technologies for providing the illusion of 3D. Shutter glasses, popularized by StereoGraphics as CrystalEyes, use an LCD shutter over each eye to enable stereo viewing. The shutters are rendered alternately opaque and transparent so that only one eye can see through the glasses at any moment. The glasses are synchronized to the display system presenting the right and left images at the same frequency as the shutters' phase shifts. These systems can work with televisions, computer monitors, or projectors, but require that the display system can generate images at twice the frequency desired for viewing, because each frame must be shown twice. In the last 10 years, stereo displays that don't require glasses have emerged from the laboratories into the marketplace. Autostereoscopic displays (ASDs) use several technologies to present different images to both of a viewer's eyes. Volumetric display systems (VDS) create an image with true depth, letting the eyes and brain work in a natural manner. ASD and VDS systems are intended to replace current 3D displays, all of which require the user to wear some sort of filtering system, such as eyeglasses.

The article discusses Jabiru, which is a package of interaction tools to enhance Java 3D application usability in an immersive CAVE environment via Java 3D's ConfiguredUniverse. Developers of conventional 3D graphics in OpenGL have an enormous wealth of VR toolkits, development tools and drag-and-drop 3D graphics creation applications available to them. There are a variety of choices of additional development toolkits supporting portability between different operating systems or visualization environments. Java 3D, as an extension package of Java, has several advantages over some of the more traditional resources. These include ease of Web accessibility, operating system independence, ease of use and ease of learning, so suitable for both the novice and the expert. The scene graph representation of 3D entities is a key feature of Java 3D that Jabiru uses extensively. One major component of Jabiru is a collection of ViewPlatformBehaviors. The base class for Jabiru is the MenuBehavior class, which extends the ViewPlatformBehavior class.

The article focuses on a novel tabletop display which provides different images to different users surrounding the system. It can also capture users' gestures and physical objects on the tabletop. The tabletop display can be used as a personal display and as a shared display for multiple users. Orientation of displayed information plays a significant role in establishing and maintaining personal and group workspaces. However, because most tabletop displays for multiple users have a single view, they have a common problem when people try to share information that has specific orientation requirements. One of the main ideas is to develop an interactive display system that allows users to stay close enough to maintain verbal and nonverbal communication while watching their own computer output. For this purpose, a horizontal tabletop display, called the Lumisight Table is developed. The approach is based on the optical design of a special screen system composed of a building material called Lumisty and a Fresnel lens. The system combines these films and a lens with four projectors to display four different images, one for each user's view. In addition, one needs appropriate input methods for this display media.

Looks at the evolution of screen magnifiers, assistive programs that help visually impaired people interact with computer systems. Presentation of the visual output as speech or refreshable Braille displays; Mechanism through which screen magnifiers capture and redisplay the computer's graphical output; Magnification approaches.

Reports the effect of the display format and interface design on aircraft and military monitoring facilities in the United States. Advantages and disadvantages of implementing three dimensional (3D) and two-dimensional (2D) displays; Details on coding aircraft attributes; Comparison between 2D and 3D formats; Assessments on the design of effective displays.

Investigates different building approaches for the Flatland augmented whiteboard interface for informal office work based on input from user studies. Replacement for the common office whiteboard used in meeting rooms, classrooms and production environments; Range of information on personal whiteboard use; Expectations about whiteboard use.

Discusses the display aspects, including the motivations, challenges, techniques and the future of projected imagery in offices. Applications of projector-based display systems; Challenges presented by the unusual geometric relationship between the projectors and display surfaces; Impact of intensity and color problems.

Describes a technique in use at Sandia National Laboratories' design centers for remote visualization and collaboration using large-format displays. Essential role of video and data conferencing; Use of equipment to support the real-time and full-frame-rate transfers of images to remote large-format displays.

Introduces the concepts and technologies used to build tiled display systems. Requirements for building projector-based display systems; Key features offered by tiled displays; Impact on image quality of the interface of data to the projector.

Explores the traditional and current uses of large displays in automotive design. Applications that make innovative use of large-format electronic displays; Traditional uses of large displays; Emerging generation of large-format displays for automotive design and construction.

Presents the authors' Scalable Display Wall project in Princeton University in New Jersey. Key features and specifications of the display system; Early experiences in building and using a display wall system; Methods to design application tools; User interfaces; Content creation and design.

Describes a research on using large displays to interactively analyze and visualize AT&T's communication networks and services. Applications and software tools; Building scalable displays; Environment for the tiled display; Key features and specifications of the large display system.

Discusses the development of a user interface called Rock 'n Scroll for information display systems. Integration of the control mechanism of the device directly into the display; Use of motion sensing for user input.

Discusses principles for the effective use of color in computer graphics. Color vision; Color perception; Information display technology; Design principles; Graphic user interfaces; Advertising; Text; Information; Visualization; Imaging; Rules for color selection.

Discusses the information display systems technologies that would make the ideal of smart environments and ubiquitous computing possible. Two choices in making displays ubiquitous; Resolution level; Wall-sized display; Large-format display systems and processors.

Presents information on wearable computers, a portable computer, focusing on spatial information displays on these computers. Definition of wearable computers; Challenges encountered with wearable computers; Features of wearable computers; Information on wearable spatial information display; Details on two spatial display experiments conducted.

Focuses on a proposed exploration technique by which 2D information display layouts can be achieved. Investigation of perceptual cues; Approaches used to create detail-in-context views; Information on viewing techniques from 3D data.

Focuses on techniques and resources used in electronic digital displays. Cooperation between graphic design and technology in the evolution of electronic digital displays; Demonstration of the practical importance of economy; Exercise in building own display.

Public-display installations can range from large-scale media facades that are embedded in architectural structures and that people can interact with only from a distance, to direct-touch interactive kiosks that provide information of local interest. These different scenarios impose different challenges and research questions regarding the design of interfaces and interaction techniques. The articles in this special issue present snapshots of several ways that researchers are addressing these challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the 10th anniversary of the IEEE Computer Society's Information Visualization Symposium. At 10, information visualization is vigorous and thriving. In the early years, the symposium had difficulty attracting enough good papers to fill the slots. Today it receives so many excellent papers that the acceptance rate is low. The field has become an academic success. Some projects have had notable commercial success. Display technologies are in the middle of a massive transition. Conventional CRTs are being swapped for large, megapixel flat-screen displays. This transition started with increasing display sizes in laptops and has accelerated as new as display technologies have moved into widely deployed consumer goods such as high-definition televisions. The result of these technology changes is that screen real estate is increasing. Seventeen- and 21-inch flat- Information visualization is domain specific. The most interesting visualizations solve problems. An emerging class of problem involves analyzing data that arrives in a stream. Massive sensor systems, video cameras, and transaction-processing systems generate real-time data streams.

Presents computer graphics products. Ideal/Context quick large-format scanner for computer-aided design; Costs of the Gateway 210 XGA and 205 SVGA mircroportable front projectors; Release of the Digital Vision Touch, a technology platform for touch-sensitive displays from Smart Technologies.

Focuses on different products used for computer graphics applications. SMM21125P portrait monitor for diagnostic review stations from Richardson Electronics; 3D ScanBook Professional, 3D ScanWare Software and 3D editor Marlin from Dimension 3D Systems.

Focuses on the 'Office of Real Soon Now' online experiment, which explores what it is like to use large-screen projection as a computer display. Use of large-screen projection instead of conventional monitors; Ways in which the systems have improved the work environment.

Evaluates prototype information appliances. Mr Java information-enabled coffee machine; Desk-based gaming appliances; Ethernet Video appliance; Application of augmented-reality techniques; Integration of video communication to the devices. INSETS: Mr Java, by Joseph Kaye and Niko Matsakis.;Exploring Mobil and Desk Based..., by Thad Starner et al.;EVA, by Alan Bell..

The article presents information on several applications of large displays. In terms of constructing large, high-resolution displays, the affordable solution still remains to tile an array of projectors together to simulate one uniform display space. Research is also addressing the user interface issues. A large-display space changes how users relate to and interact with digital information. Many of the traditional desktop user interfaces and interaction techniques become awkward or next to impossible to use on a large display. User interfaces for large displays need some sort of input system so the user can interact with the display. In this domain, input technologies continue to lag behind display output. Few solutions have been designed and even fewer commercial solutions are available. Research on large horizontal displays is also quite active. This configuration is well suited for collaborative activities and has the additional challenge of dealing with the viewing orientation of the information.

The article focuses on Sharp's LL-151-3D display which is the company's first stand alone display that uses 3D liquid crystal display technology. Users can switch the 15-inch monitor between 2D and 3D viewing by pressing a button on the monitor. The monitor doesn't requite shutter glasses and uses a parallax barrier to divide light so that different patterns reach the viewer's left and right eyes. Users can adjust the height and angle of the monitor with its integrated slide system, swiveling the display up to 90 degrees and raising it upto 60 mm. The product features built-in stereo speakers, analog and digital video inputs, a 500:1 contrast ratio and a color-management function.

Discusses the emergence of visual computing based on enormous visual information and natural user interactions as the future of computing systems. Rise of large-format display devices as commodity items; Development of display technologies such as organic light-emitting diodes.

The article discusses related research efforts in tackling aspects to consider when researchers attempt to visualize large 3D landscapes and geographic information systems-based city models. The discussion primarily focuses in client-service architecture models and incremental level-of-detail models for progressive streaming. According to the author, a network-based virtual environment is a client-server architecture that focuses on solving the problem of data replication. Meanwhile, progressive 3D model compression and streaming is a key issue for optimizing bandwidth occupation and adapting to terminal resources.

The article introduces a curved Matrix display system developed by Christie. The author gives the key functions and features, applications, and specifications of the product.

The article reports that Fakespace Systems Inc. has announced the release of the WorkZ visualization system. The product is a real-time computing and active stereoscopic projection system bundle. It provides all the computing and hardware components for a large-screen immersive display system, with image quality comparable to a three-chip DLP projector. The system comes with a projector and 1,500 lumens per eye brightness, a 3- GHz Pentium 4 workstation with 1-Gbyte RAM and a dual digital video output graphics card, a wall-mounted or freestanding rear projection screen with high gain to preserve brightness and two active stereoscopic glasses and synchronization signal emitters.

The article reports that Westinghouse Digital Electronics LLC has released its first line of high-definition liquid crystal display (LCD) monitors for commercial application, as well as decorative art frames for LCD TVs.

The article presents information on Cinema4D Release 9, a modeling and animation tool that reportedly features more than 100 new functions including cloth simulation, subpolygon displacement, and N-Gons, by Maxon Corp. With N-Gons, users can create complete models based on polygons with any number of points. Plus, an upgraded modeling toolset features improved polygon knitting and stitching as well as a brush tool that lets users paint point deformations on a model. An improved interface now includes the heads-up display, which shows freely configurable information directly in the editor as well as dynamic highlights to preview mode before they are executed. Other features reportedly include the clothtilde functions for adding clothing to characters and simulating any type of cloth, perfect character motion, motion. blending for improved workflow, and an enhanced advanced render module.

The article presents information on the release of Neo-Flex, an adjustable stand for liquid crystal display (LCD) monitors and small LCD televisions, by Ergotron. The stand provides five inches of vertical movement so that users can reposition theft monitors, rotating the monitor up, down, left, or right with a fingertip. It's ideal for situations where multiple people use the same monitor. The stand attaches to flat-panel monitors that are Video Electronics Standards Association compliant and weigh between six and 16 pounds.

The article presents information on various articles related to information technology to be published in 2005 in the journal "Computer Graphics." The article "Emerging Technologies," published in the January-February 2005 issue covers the Siggraph 2004 Emerging Technologies exhibit, where the graphics community demonstrates innovative approaches to interactivity in robotics, graphics, music, audio, displays, haptics, sensors, gaming, the Web, etc. In March-April 2005 issue will contain an article "State-of-the-Art Graphics," which covers an array state-of-the-art computer graphics, including new developments in VR, visualization, and novel applications. The article "Applications of Large Displays," to be published in the July-August 2005 issue focuses on the emergence of large displays which holds the promise of basking one in rich and dynamic visual landscapes of information, art, and entertainment.

The article reports that Fifth Dimension Technologies Inc. released its Ultra series of data gloves and head-mounted displays (HMDs). The data gloves contain 14 sensors and reportedly offer comfort, ease of use, a small form factor and multiple application drivers. HMDs feature a 40-degree field of view, high resolution,a long cable and a light design. Series also includes virtual binoculars, laser range finders, nightvision goggles and monocular displays.

Eizo Nanao Technologies Inc. announced the addition of three models of liquid crystal displays (LCD) monitors. The 19-inch FlexScan L788 and FlexScan L768, and the 17-inch FlexS can L568 are the latest models in the company's SlimEdge series of LCD monitors. All models feature thin bezels around the perimeter of the screen. This design is complemented by color control and gamma correction features. The models offer ergonomic designs with tilt and swivel angles of 41 and 70 degrees, and a height adjustment range of 100 mm. The screen also pivots 90 degrees into portrait orientation for viewing text documents or Web pages.

Focuses on developments in the technology of flat-panel displays. How the displays have improved; Information on liquid-crystal displays; Advantages of flat displays.