This paper is just gung ho about the new visualization studio at Alias’s corporate headquarters in Toronto, where the authors work. The Alias Visualization Studio (VizStudio) uses large display technology to “support digital visual communication and collaboration with corporate clients, future customers, employees, and corporate partners.” In other words, the VizStudio is used more for marketing than for scientific or engineering visualizations, which one presumes is the usual focus of this journal.

The studio is an eight-sided room, of about 40-by-80 feet, with projection wall panels, each 12-by-9 feet, on all walls of the room. Seating is in the center, and can be reconfigured as needed. Five of the wall panels can rotate and slide, allowing Alias to create anything from break-out rooms to full-room theater seating.

To show material on the screens, presenters can use six high-end workstations and a variety of laptops to feed video and presentations to any of the large displays. A custom-built Web-based graphical user interface (GUI) makes it possible to show material seamlessly across multiple screens, or one screen at a time (unfortunately, no details were provided).

The value of this paper, aside from the envy and desire it may engender in its readers, is the authors’ observations of the room in use. For example, they found that presenters must be warned to create widescreen format versions of their presentations: “Microsoft PowerPoint slides should be reformatted to use all of the visual space and resolution instead of showing the standard 4:3 aspect ratio presentation.” If presenters fail to do so, the center slide is surrounded by lots of empty space. The reason is that the front wall is “often driven by one computer [with] dual monitor support (one for each projector), and PowerPoint centers the content across both monitors.” The authors add, “Moreover, depending on the content, there can be interesting scale effects that occur when the material, originally designed on a desktop monitor, is now magnified by an order of magnitude on the large displays.”

If your company is considering a visualization studio, or even a large-scale multi-wall projection system, you will find this paper helpful. Even more helpful would be an invitation to visit the VizStudio--I’m sure the tiny photos in the paper don’t do it justice.