When starting at MIT, 8k resolution was barely becoming a reality. Our group at the Media Lab had gotten a prototype very large display. I was tasked with finding out interesting ways to use this. In general, the most interesting usages that I had found were for 3D data visualization and for data analysis. Apart from this, I collaborated with some folks from NHK who helped develop an immersive safari experience in the system.
The 3D data manipulation system was called the 8K Data Manipulator. The 8K Data Manipulator was a Unity game engine application which harnesses the gesture recognition and limb tracking available through Microsoft Kinect and combines it with the multitouch capability of our 8K display. Using either gesture at a distance or close-up touch, a user can rotate, zoom, and slice a very large graphical dataset. The other application was a Where's Waldo-like prototype. The thought was taht a very large screen can be utilized by multiple users to perform quick, highly detailed, visual analysis of a dataset to identify anomalies. In the developed application, users utilize touch and gestures to navigate a large 3D city in which a person of a varying size is placed randomly. The application serves as a proof of concept that multiple users can interact with one large, high resolution dataset to visually find anomalies.
