Archive for October, 2009
Shared Libraries Under Linux
I’m mainly posting this so I won’t lose the link (what are bookmarks?). Excellent reference for shared libraries under linux.
Physics Libraries
I’ve been adding in some fun physics demos for our viscube. In the past I’ve always used ODE, since it was the only decent open source physics engine. It looks like some new ones have come out that have some great potential. I hope to try them out over the next few weeks and review them:
- Bullet – This was created by an ex-Havok employee
Then there are these two which are for generic modeling and simulation. Both look really neat and useful.
Can’t we all just get along?
Why do admins insist on being so difficult to get a long with?
I’ve been at this job for over 6 years now. I work in a research lab, developing systems and software. Typically our lab has always been linux based. Since the admins typically worry about the Windows labs and faculty Windows machines, the school has always let us do what we want with our computers. It’s always been our responsibility to setup and admin our own machines. Some communication and ground rules have been necessary for playing nice on their network, which we have always obeyed. In the six years I’ve been here, we’ve never had a problem.
Recently there has been a push by the IT group to “gain control.” This started off slowly when we willingly handed over some of our servers (web and subversion) to the linux cluster admin. At first we shared admin access on these machines. The admin’s kept them up to date, we setup whatever software environments were necessary. We all got along and it was happy times.
As old machines were phased out, new machines were setup by IT and we were locked out. There were a small hassles here and there, but they still weren’t touching our workstations or our development system, so we worked through it. Slowly they have crept into our realm and taken away more and more of our machines. They are refusing to allow me to put the new viscube on the network because I have admin on it. Well no shit! I setup the machine, and need to be able to install new libraries for developing on it. It is a research machine after all. Now they said I have to take my laptop off the network. Next it will be my workstation.
A full fledged war is breaking out. This is probably the most frustrated I have ever been at work. I can see some systems where we don’t need access, but much of what I do is systems design. Yes, that means I need custom distributions installed. I need to be able to tweak kernel parameters, drivers, or reinstall the machine. I need to be able to swap hardware, install new libraries, try new versions of dependencies. IT seems to think that the issue is black and white, which of course nothing ever is. I’ve just finished writing up several pages of justification on why we should still be able to have admin on our machines.
Next week the battle will happen and I feel like I’m on the losing side. The dean is making the decisision and the network admin has been able to do such a good job scaring her, she’s barely willing to listen to us. I am so frustrated by this whole mess, that I will seriously consider leaving my job if they are not willing to compromise. I cannot continue to work in an unfriendly environment, and I will not work in an environment that keeps me from being productive!
CAVE^H^H^H^H Viscube Installed
Our CAVE, err, Viscube (we aren’t supposed to use the ‘C’ word around here) was installed last week. This is a 4-wall immersive environment developed by our friends at Visbox. The installation happened just in time for our important Advisory Council meeting which gave me a whole day and a half to get the machine setup with working demos. No stress there! I need a vacation!
Cave environments are nothing new, nor are any of us in ETLab strangers to them. There are several nice things about our Viscube that weren’t available in older Caves:
- Passive Stereo: I hate, hate, hate, I mean HATE active stereo shutter glasses. I don’t care what rate they sync at, they make me nauseous in minutes. Passive glasses I can stare through all day. Even better, we are not using polarization, but instead using glasses from Infitech which are quick slick (although expensive. ~$250/glasses)
- Single machine setup: That’s right, an 8-core machine with 16 gigs of RAM and 4 Quadro FX 4700, each with dual output. This let’s us power 4 screens (front, left, right, and floor) with a single machine. This certainly makes programming easier as we don’t have to worry about shared memory or communication between machines. Everything could be run in a single thread, although we may as well take advantage of our 8 cores.
I’m excited to finally have a cave environment here. We have several stereo single wall displays, but you don’t get the immersion out of those that you can get in a cave setup. It’ll be fun to play with, and I have a few ideas for some projects I want to develop on it.
Virtual Reality…Simulated Reality.. VR. We’ve been talking about this for decades, and where are we now? Where’s my holodeck? Where’s my virtual vacation? If you ask me, Virtual Reality is not the future. We (the computer graphics industry) have been talking about VR for decades. Has anything improved? Our pictures are a lot prettier than they used to be, but haptics devices are still mostly useless (except for a very few specific uses), mobility is limited in a cave environment, and caves only work for a single viewer. It’s still impossible to simulate the entire environment in the computer, and there’s no ability to have real, physical objects in the cave. So what then? If we can’t do VR, what’s next?
AR – Augmented Reality is where it’s at. We’ve started to see simple AR applications. We see them every time we watch a football game, or here in Alabama, NASCAR, we’ve even seen them on the iphone. AR consists of mixing virtual into the real. In the NFL the yellow first down line drawn across the field is a great example of AR. But we are still in infancy, and until we get better at image processing (which will happen soon!), AR is limited in its applications. This is where my research interests really lie, and I’m exciting about being part of of this emerging field. I’ll have lots of posts in the future about my AR research. For now you can see a simple example of AR, and another project where we are using it practially.
New Blog
Welcome. I’ve decided it’s time to start a blog solely dedicated to my work and/or subjects that relate to my work. Hopefully this will stay up to date, and I’ll actually do something at work worth writing about ;-p