Preliminary STAR TAP Tele-Immersion Experiments between Chicago and Singapore (1998)

Tele-Immersion is the merging of audio and video conferencing with collaborative virtual reality, datamining and significant computation systems. As Tele-Immersion often involves distantly located participants all interacting with each other in real-time, it relies heavily on the quality of the underlying networks used to distribute information between participants. This paper presents our preliminary findings of testing a number of tele-immersive applications over the STAR TAP link between Chicago and Singapore. The goal is to be able to prescribe and deploy a suite of Tele-Immersion networking experiments around the world for testing and comparing the quality of their links so that predictions can be made of the suitability of the link for supporting different classes of Tele-Immersion applications. Introduction Tele-Immersion (Leigh97b) is the integration of audio and video conferencing with collaborative virtual reality (VR) in the context of data-mining and significant computation. When participants are teleimmersed, they are able to see and interact with each other in a shared environment. This environment persists even when all the participants have left. The environment may control supercomputing computations, query databases autonomously and gather the results for visualization when the participants return. Participants may even leave messages for their colleagues who can then replay them as a full audio, video and gestural stream. CAVERN (the CAVE Research Network) is a collection of participating industrial and research institutions equipped with CAVEs, ImmersaDesks, and high-performance computing resources all interconnected by high-speed networks for the purpose of supporting tele-immersiveengineering and design; education and training; and scientific visualization and computational steering. In 1992 there was a single CAVE in Chicago, in 1998 there are over 80 CAVE and ImmersaDesk installations around the world. One of the problems facing this growing community, and the VR community as a whole, is how to best provide a mechanism to support long term collaborative work between them. CAVERNsoft (Leigh97a, 97c) is our architecture for achieving the goals of Tele-Immersion. Part of CAVERNsoft's research goals is to develop techniques to evaluate the networks over which the tele-immersive activities take place. This paper describes our preliminary experiences and results of connecting over a collection of high speed/bandwidth networks called STAR TAP, between the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC) at the National University of Singapore. STAR TAP -Science, Technology And Research Transit Access Point -is a model for international highperformance networking that will facilitate scientific collaborations on such computationally demanding and data-intensive topics as global climate change, protein structures, nano-materials, video streaming, and interactive virtual reality. Supported by a three-year, $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation, the STAR TAP project intends to provide a persistent connection point for U.S. and