A practical and flexible tiled display system

Abstract

Computer graphics and high-resolution digital imagery are becoming increasingly pervasive in communities not traditionally associated with graphics. Commodity graphics cards and digital cameras, along with powerful modeling software, allow organizations such as libraries, museums, and small businesses to produce expressive and realistic computer generated imagery, far surpassing the capabilities of current desktop monitors. What remains elusive to these groups is access to affordable and easy to use large format display technology. We present a practical system for deploying flexible projector based tiled displays. Our framework integrates two key components: (1) self-calibrating display geometry with real-time geometric correction and (2) PC-based distributed rendering that supports an established graphics API. Our system's display geometry is easy to configure and reconfigure, accommodates casually tiled projectors and arbitrary display surfaces, and can be operational in a matter of minutes. In addition, the underlying distributed rendering architecture (WireGL) is transparent to existing OpenGL applications, requiring no custom APIs or re-compilation of existing OpenGL executables. In short, we present a practical and flexible low-cost tiled display system that is simple to deploy and easy to operate.