Design of a Scenario-Based Immersive Experience Room

This thesis presents an innovative system for the management and control of multimedial and multisensorial immersive virtual reality environments. The thesis gives an overview of the state of the art in immersive visualization and large displays technology, also giving an outline of applications, existing installations, and usability benefits and issues. Target applications are many and diverse, including usage as visual analysis tools, as cognitive aids, as art experiences, and as entertainment systems. SAGE, a flexible graphics streaming system for large display surfaces is presented and described in depth, in terms of architecture, capabilities, and performance characteristics. The evolution of this middleware, SAGE2, is also presented and compared to its predecessor. The Immersive Virtual Environment (IVE) for SAGE is presented as a high level management overlay to one or more immersive large display installations. Design choices, architecture, implementation details, and limitations are discussed in depth. Hardware acceleration of graphics streaming systems such as SAGE is discussed and a proof of concept implementation is presented using a high-performance System on Chip development board. Lastly, a real-world installation of IVE is described.