U of CA Constructs 220 Million Pixel Display

eldavojohn writes "Engineers at the University of California, San Diego have built a 220 million pixel display across 55 high-resolution tiled screens. Linked via optical fiber to Calit2's building at UC Irvine, the display can deliver real-time rendered graphics simultaneously across 420 million pixels to audiences in Irvine and San Diego."

IR4

[dwater]

Silicon Graphics' Onyx IR4 could drive this many pixels, couldn't it?

IIRC, it was 16 pipes, 8 displays per pipe, 1920x1200 per display - I make that almost 300M (pixels, not dollars - it'd be *many* more dollars) - probably not remembering correctly, but still. ... and OpenGL Performer could make it all work nicely for visualisation too. I wonder what's happened to OpenGL Performer.

Soon a 7 billion pixel display? 1 pixel/person?

[wisebabo]

It is conceivable that soon technology/engineering will make it possible to have a multi billion pixel display.

An interesting application might be to assign a pixel to each person living. Then as they pass through the phases of life, their brightness could wax and wane. Also perhaps color could be used to identify race or geography.

Might be an interesting display in a world's fair/expo kind of context. Being able to walk right up to it and realizing that you are just one of the billions of little dots could be pretty awe inspiring.

Perhaps it would give new meaning to the comment "he seems kinda bright". (ba du bum ;)

Re:No, but yes

[Anonymous Coward]

I got the impression from a new scientist article that the transfer to the brain is not ina "raw" format, but in the format that you describe the brain using- the processing is local (in the optical nerve) to save bandwidth.
It described the mechanism being a second set of nerves behind the rods and cones that fired in response to certain relative changes between nearby rods and cones.

Re:Not a theater system!

[poot_rootbeer]

This is not a theater system, so complaining about seams misses the point entirely.

I can't think of a large-format display usage that WOULDN'T benefit from seamlessness. I don't know why you think it's only relevant to movie theaters.