Series
SMACK 19: "Introducing the new 133-Mpixel visualization wall of the IAC"

Abstract

In a time when we deal with extremely large images (be it from computer
simulations or from extremely powerful telescopes), visualizing them can
become a challenge. If we use a regular monitor, we have two options:

1) fit the image to our monitor resolution, which involves interpolation
and thus losing information and the ability to see small image details.

2) zooming in on small parts of the image to view them at full
resolution, which involves losing context and the global view of the
full image.

To alleviate these problems, display walls of hundreds of Megapixels can
be built, which allow us to visualize in full resolution small details
of the images while retaining in view a larger image context. For
example, one of the world's highest resolution tiled-displays is
Stallion (https://www.tacc.utexas.edu/vislab/stallion, at the TACC in
Texas, USA), with an impressive resolution of 597 Megapixels (an earlier
version of the system can be seen being used at
https://tinyurl.com/mt7atad9).

At the IAC we have built a more modest display wall (133 Megapixels),
which you probably have already seen in action in one of our recent
press releases (https://tinyurl.com/4bwtxvec). In this talk I will
introduce this new visualization facility (which any IAC researcher can
use) and discuss on some design issues, possible current and future
uses, limitations, etc.