I wrote a white paper about why resolution matters in control rooms and other environments where information density and content are important. I wrote it in response to the increasing popularity of Direct View LED (dvLED) in digital signage. Because dvLED is bright and beautiful and almost seamless, there is temptation to use it for control room video walls rather than the tiled LCD panels normally used. dvLED is quite costly, so some integrators may push it to increase their profit, but for the moment, control room customers will likely be unhappy with the result.
The problem with today’s dvLED tiles is that their pixel pitch is quite coarse. For digital signage and concert venues, this is fine, but if detailed information is to be displayed or for close viewing, it is not ideal. The pixel pitch (the distance between pixels) for some of the best currently available dvLED systems is more than 4 times worse than ordinary commercial LCD monitors. That means for the same size display, every 4 pixels on an LCD display are equivalent to 1 pixel on the dvLED tile. So essentially, buying a top-quality dvLED system costs a lot more and gives a quarter the resolution. (For this example, the assumptions are 1.3mm pitch for the dvLED and 0.6mm pitch for the LCD panel – I know 0.9mm LED is coming, but it’ll be expensive).
If we revisit this in 2 years, costs for dvLED will be down and the pixel pitch will be much closer to the 0.6mm that a common commercial LCD panel can do. Until then, for detailed information display, avoid paying a lot more for much coarser resolution.
I wrote a blog post for the Hiperwall web site about how we can put content anywhere and at pretty much any size. This was prompted by one of our competitors claiming they could do Picture-In-Picture, while we couldn’t. Well that’s absurd, because we can put anything anywhere, so if you want a video stream in front of another video stream, just move it there. Heck, put 2 or 3 in front – that’s OK. I even made the video shown in the blog post of an animated video stream becoming partially transparent as it flies over another video stream that is in front of a very high-resolution live data feed of the air traffic map around LAX.
This capability has been part of Hiperwall for years, so we don’t really think about how powerful and different it is until we’re reminded of exactly how limited our competitors are. Picture-in-Picture is an amusing thing for a competitor to think is great, because it has fallen out of favor – the TVs I bought in the first decade of this century all had it as a feature, but modern TVs don’t bother, because it is a hassle and most people don’t use it. Now I’m not saying it isn’t a useful concept for a video wall, but I think flexible object positioning is far more capable and powerful than very limiting Picture-in-Picture features.
I wrote a post for the Hiperwall blog comparing the traditional A/V technology to circuit switching in networks, while the newer IT-based visualization approaches are more like packet switching. Click for more.
At Hiperwall, our tagline is “See the big picture” and we do that well. In applications from scientific visualization to control rooms and operations centers, being able to see lots of information in great detail allows our users to understand more clearly and make important decisions quickly. We’ve shown billion pixel images on Hiperwall systems, but haven’t had anything larger until now.
One of our developers used a capability provided by an NVIDIA library that the developers of Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt included in their video game to take an enormous game capture. He chose a resolution of more than 61,000 pixels by 34,000 pixels, so 2 gigapixels altogether. It took an absolute beast of a computer about a minute to render and save the resulting 1 GB file. Once the image was imported into our Hiperwall system, we could see how amazing it looked.
Here we’re showing the image fully zoomed out on our small 24 megapixel Hiperwall, so we can see Geralt on his horse. Click on the photo to see it in more detail.
Geralt in a 2Gpixel image shown on Hiperwall
When we zoom in to see his face, however, we can see the amazing detail in the rendering. We can see details of his witcher eye and the links on his armor. This image shows a zoom level of 1.0, so every pixel on the Hiperwall shows one pixel from the image.
Finally, we animated zooming in on the image, so you can see how smoothly we can manipulate images, even those with 2 billion pixels. (Sorry about the canned music – we had people talking in the room as I shot the video.)
This is the Building a Product panel at the UC Technology Commercialization Forum on May 8th. Next to me are Dr. Christine Ho of Imprint Energy and Dr. Michelle Brown of Olfactor Laboratories, as well as the moderator Dr. Thomas Lipkin of UCLA. The picture is pretty low res, because it was cropped from an iPhone 4S photo taken 25 or so feet away by my wife. I should have brought my good camera for her to use…
On Thursday May 8th, I participated in the “Building a Product” panel at the University of California Technology Commercialization Forum at the Westin Hotel near San Francisco Airport. The day-long event had presentations by researchers who have products that are nearly ready to commercialize, as well as panels and talks by venture capitalists and members of industry.
The “Building a Product” panel was right after lunch, so it had great attendance. It was moderated by Dr. Thomas Lipkin from UCLA. The other panelists were Dr. Christine Ho of Imprint Energy and Dr. Michelle Brown of Olfactor Laboratories. We all had very different experiences in the transition from academia to startup, so the panel had plenty of different perspectives.
It was exciting to hear UC President Janet Napolitano mention Hiperwall and the other companies by name during her opening address!
Homeland Security Today magazine has published an article about how a powerful, yet cost-effective Hiperwall video wall solution helped the Coast Guard modernize their command center while maintaining and enhancing capability in a budget conscious manner.
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