 Thank you, Jeff. So so we're gonna get started Thank you everyone for coming. My name is Haipeng Lee. I'm the University librarian at UC Merced now throughout the the day the sessions that have been to there is a lot of discussions and talks about You know issues from a theoretical kind of level from a policy kind of level So we're approaching this from a really pragmatic kind of level. We you know, how we actually planned on being on building facilities like this and put it to use Sort of have it now in operation You may have not heard about you seem to say And I'm not surprised UC Merced is one of the ten campuses within the University of California system So and we're at the newest campus within the system. So we are We are only 13 years old But we're growing like crazy by 2020 Where we'll have 13 new additional buildings complete completed that's in two years and then we you know between now and 2020 we'll have about a hundred faculty positions to fill and We'll continue to expand with our student population as well. So there are a lot of Exciting things that are happening. There are also a lot of challenges that we face If you are not sure where you see Merced is now Here's a map of California and you can see Merced is right in the middle of the state It's really in the Central Valley Where you know two and a half hours from San Francisco, you know two hours from Sacramento four hours from LA and We're 1.5 hours to the Yosemite National Park and these pictures that you've seen around the perimeter Some of them are about the city others about the campus and still there are a few that's about the Yosemite National Park So, you know virtual reality is not an unfamiliar concept anymore You know used to be to a lot of people. So a simple definition Here is basically virtual reality is just a computer-generated interactive representation of an environment that looks like real and really just you know mimics the the real world and This technology has become better and better, but it's still you know, it's kind of getting there but not quite and You know, it's it's this kind of uncanny valley kind of situation where Human beings are kind of hard to mimic kind of hard to draw So there's there's you can sort of see there is that still that gap between virtual reality Right, right So From my part, I'm going to talk about the library cave from the library's point of view, but also from the campus perspective and My colleague Jeff will talk about the wave. We have another facility in an academic building that is larger all of this happened because of a Project that four campuses within the UC system UC LA UC Berkeley UC San Diego and UC Merced came together to Collaborate on this On this project that that was funded with a multi-million dollar funding to purchase these facilities to really support the mostly humanity's Scholars research That's why we have library cave Picture here and then the wave and also had UCSD San Diego's wave here as well When we were planning on the library cave We were really we had this idea of having this facility somewhere that is visible That is easy to attract people and easy to be exposed to students and to Users that come to the library. So this is a floor map of our second floor in the library as you can see The star is where the library cave is and is you know, it's located right at the center of the floor So, you know students come in They whether they hear to do Just study or do research or to socialize with their friends They will see this facility and we had three kind of three goals in mind when we're building this One was to have it exposed to students so that we got their interest The second one was we tried to embed a facility like this as a learning tool into teaching and learning and Some level of student research so and the third goal is to possibly to Do demos to donor potential donors. So when we have a lot of trustees, they're very interested in sort of new technology and These kinds of new initiatives. So we want to make sure that we have this Available for that purpose as well So here's again a picture of the library cave Right right there. So some of the features of this of this Facility as you can see Actually, it's not that complicated. It's pretty simple Basically, we have three, you know, it's not that big We have three 72 inch, you know, LCD panels there You can't see it But you know at the bottom there is a computer behind it, you know, just one computer that's driving these images these these TV panels and It serves multi purposes You know for various kinds of programs like the Cal VR the 3d 2d kind of programs and As I said, it's not that big. It's you know, 86 inches high and 110 inches wide and then 50 inches deep so it's not a huge facility here and You don't have to spend a whole a fortune to build something like this We only spent about 25k on something like this Some people say what this technology is kind of outdated and But I think you know it serves our purpose. I think you know the faculty Use this, you know for their teaching and for for learning. So I think it's it's it's quite good for for us and We're getting into some technical aspects of this I'm wearing the hoodie Jeff is the technical but I'm gonna give it a try So the whole point about VR is really to create a new environment where you feel that you're part of it or part of it So you're immersed in this this environment, but you have to kind of position the viewers At the right angle to be able to get the whole field of view So this is you know different sizes of the of the view and How you would position yourself? In these kinds of the environment So the library cave is kind of in between the big picture and the middle picture. So it's about 6k Well, it's 12k And then the wave which I'll talk about is even bigger than all of these and the idea is that the more field of You you can immerse yourself in The more present and real The virtual reality will seem less virtual more real And as I said one of the main goals was really to embed this into teaching So we have one faculty member Professor Nicola Lucari who actually is listed on the slide But he couldn't he couldn't come he he's not available. He said another conference So he actually we started this last year as a pilot using his class so last year he taught a world world heritage class 110 Called 3d modeling cultural heritage And this this semester he's continuing to teach that so he's teaching another one also world heritage 160 called methods in digital heritage so He would bring his students here to the library and have these studio sessions and students as you can see from the pictures You know students interact with the 3d and 2d kind of the environment to show the next slide really sort of to present their lab assignments results, but also, you know their Creations from these class assignments and you know sort of visualize, you know these kinds of findings. So it's really You know I what I'm pleased about this is really embedded into the curricular planning and So students they they actually assigned to use the facility for their for their work so With that I'm going to turn it over to Jeff Thank you. Yeah, so That was always in the plan Was to use the smaller facility for Teaching and learning and in fact it's open anybody can just walk right up to it and start to use it It's got a couple of different modes It can be a kiosk where people use a game controller and the students are very familiar with that vernacular In this case it's being used as a virtual studio for interactive design now What Hypon didn't mention was that these things are all in the network. So they're connected to each other So when the when the graduate assistant Says okay, everybody. We're gonna meet at the library. We're gonna do design review He's not carrying a thumb drive around anywhere. We can actually push files up to this device over our science DMZ network Very very fast. It's a 10 gigabit per second network. So they can have these interactive design sessions and then be Manipulating the files that reside on a server somewhere else in real time And so it really allows them to do iterative design in a way that they couldn't do by submitting their homework emailing or or or these other ways of collaborating now Other people have put these Small cave kiosks in libraries before the Geisel library here at UC San Diego is the first one There's one at UC Berkeley's Hearst Museum of Anthropology, there's one at UCLA's Museum But the wave the big one and I'll talk about that in a minute Was the first One of its kind to actually go into a digital humanity space these usually land in engineering computer science sometimes medical schools You see them in automotive design centers in one way or another aerospace and and military applications Never before had this technology been put into a humanities lab, so I Came to the UC Merced in 2016 I'm retired faculty from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey And I came all the way back from New Zealand, which is where I had retired to build this lab So it's really really great It was for a while the largest walk-in VR facility in the world at a hundred and sixty six megapixels Which provides an incredible amount of immersion and sense of presence in this virtual environment Unlike putting on the headset where you're sort of isolated. This is really you're in a collaborative environment It's a space for five or six people You can have multiple interactive Inputs you can split the columns. It's a very very flexible system and this really more Closely matches how we learn and how we collaborate together So this is the technical stuff. It is why I wear the hoodie It's built from 24k OLED TV So OLED is a different kind of technology than the LCD the liquid crystal displays It's actually each pixel is its own light source and Since it's its own light source if it's black it turns off if it's white it lights up So that dynamic range and the brightness is really really incredible They are stunning televisions and I'm afraid once you visit the wave This will ruin your home television forever. So Come in at your before warned it does have 10 rendering nodes and those are high-end Linux based machines and each one has Dedicated GTX 1080 graphics card for each one of the screens and we do that So we can really push the system in ways That gamers would push the system Like I said, it's connected up to the network at a very fast speed 10 gigabit We have 10 gigabit per second connection to the outside world and 10 gigabit Connection in between each computer. Now to give you a little perspective You're probably not a network engineer 10 gigabits is actually Somewhere around 10,000 times faster than your high-speed internet at home if you have a hundred megabit per second So it's quite fast. We can do Multiple terabyte file transfers in a matter of hours. We can do gigabyte file transfers in a matter of seconds so When we do collaboration with UC San Diego, we're just pushing these multi gigabit files around like crazy and Of course the network engineers think there's a denial of service attack going on, but really we're just doing research We do have Tracking and you know if you if you heard the keynote this morning you realize. Oh, wow We could be we could be really studying how people interact in these. We're not doing that yet We use our tracker for just user interaction because a tiny little mouse pointer would get completely lost on this screen So we use a different way But we can tell where you're looking and what you're pointing at Interestingly we also put a Dolby Atmos 11.2 surround sound system in there and that's as good as it gets if you're out in a theater It's a really really nice system and we can render 3d audio in this space as well Now if you look at this image, you're like well, that's kind of weird. It's sort of just crammed in there This room actually wasn't designed for this Installation so we retrofitted the installation to fit the room and that means Even though you don't have a brand new building that's purpose built for this kind of stuff You can have one of these two because they're very flexible in their design now. There's nothing in here that's You know really revolutionary most of this technology has been around for a long time the spiffiest thing or the 4k OLED TVs Most everything else you can buy from Best Buy or or B&H photo and video so It's not really Revolutionary it's more evolutionary and this is the 13th or 14th one of these that I've built over the last 10 or 15 years With Tom DeFonte from see it UCSD as as lead of course And this last bullet point here is something that I want to emphasize we took the savings that we accrued by using this off-the-shelf commercially available stuff and We spent about a hundred thousand dollars on building an ecosystem So everything that you would need to use to build content for this is already included So we have the wave which is the front of the house and we have the wave lab Which we invite people into to create content So that's one of the ways that we foster adoption Both for these more research oriented Facilities like the wave and the public Facilities like the library cave First rule and hype hung Hinted at it. It's location location location So in the library's case front and center right in the middle of second floor right where all the students are at For me in the wave. It's in the digital humanities lab. So as the centerpiece to that DH lab We have the wave Keep the system open and running during regular business hours, that's rule two I walk by the way the library cave every morning when I get into work to make sure that it's up and running These things do not survive benign neglect. They take active management Every day you've got to be checking on you know, is the system healthy? Is it running? Is it doing what it's supposed to be doing? Sometimes the fix is really simple. Oh, we have to turn the TVs on Sometimes the fix is a little harder. Oh, we have to reboot the system, but every day we do a health check Rule number three have also hinted at be permissive with access. We are inviting people to use these resources I have an intern in the wave lab and I actually got him because I left the door open and He walked in and he said wow What is this and I explained it to him and he's been it's been the best He's he's there for me whenever I need him and if I'd have the door closed. I wouldn't have that intern I wouldn't have provided that access. So don't put these in locked rooms Just staff them with an intern and rule for empower others. So Really, there's no way to make a mistake here. If if you do something wrong, it's not harmful You know worst-case scenario we turn the lights on and and plug it back in So empower others to use this and and I'm gonna talk a little bit about how we are empowering others at UC Merced by Doing something that I think is actually unique And that is we have a docent guide program. So I have a Some VIPs coming tomorrow to the wave lab and I know that our student guides will go in there and give a great demo Doesn't cost me anything doesn't cost our visitors anything Gives the students some really great experience and it has been a student-led effort at UC Merced Through the student success internship program We focus on basic operation simple troubleshooting and navigation skills That's step one We just let them kind of go wild in there they can load any content they want they can look at anything they want And they can spend all afternoon in there if they have the time So they also get a basic understanding of the component technology just a little bit more than I gave you but you know still enough to Address any questions people might have And lastly we have this student Developed magazine style guidebook that tells them about the content that they're that they need to interpret They can open up a page and read all about Luxor, Egypt Which is one of the locations where we have content from and they can speak authoritatively and tell stories Which is how we we learn around the content So our motivations for For establishing this innovative program where we wanted to reach into the future by engaging these undergraduate students Many of these undergraduate students will go on and become graduate students. Some of them will go on and get their PhDs they'll be aware of this technology. They'll use this technology So it's really about Fostering a future where people understand this interdisciplinary collaborative framework that we're trying to build I Can't be everywhere at once people so I'm here talking to you that means I'm not in the lab giving a demo or a tour But having the student guides there means that business can continue I have a I have a plan for for accommodating all the people that want to come through the lab now We've probably had since we opened in 2016 Maybe close to a thousand people come visit In one way or another so it's a capacity building exercise We also give Student groups the student ACM Association of Computing Machinery Game Developers Club The VR Club a focus for their activities they can come in and they can use the system for their clubs and It allows the older students the juniors and the seniors to do near peer mentoring with the younger students. So I really It's sort of self perpetuating and in a way that I don't have to really get involved all that much and the students have Really taken over and because I am just one person This really speaks to the scalability and sustainability of The wave the wave lab in the library cave So here's my quick bullet list now I put a slide in at the beginning about VR not being a new technology, right? Well, I've been in the VR game for a Really long time even by computer Science standards I Started in virtual reality almost 25 years ago I know I was a baby and Through the 90s through the 2000 I started in VR before there was any such thing as a graphics card. So I have learned some really hard lessons about VR and what succeeds and what doesn't succeed First of all, you have to build that ecosystem. It's about the tools It's about the workflow supporting the researchers supporting the educators to create content and display content You want to invite people in to share content? You want to train non-experts. He doesn't take a computer scientist or a master student Or a PhD student to give a really great tour The undergraduates can do this as well We want to engage diverse academics and researchers now I I used to teach and when I taught I taught a visualization course and I would ask the students Who are all master students? How many people in the room use visualization and maybe one or two would sheepishly raise their hand? Well, if you use a bar graph or you use PowerPoint or if you ever shown anybody a picture of your dog You use visualization So we can and we can engage the broadest Set of constituents for this kind of infrastructure. It's not just for game development and computer scientists And get it networked make sure that it's connected. There are dozens of these around California hundreds of these around the United States and Perhaps a thousand or more around the world And because it's so easy and anyone can do it hint hint We don't know how many of them are out there so get it networked and and Build a network of people to use it every day. So there's a saying it's a little crude But in computer science, we say oh we eat our own dog food. That means we make VR We show VR every day. We use VR And That's all I have to say so I think we have some time for some questions If you have them I saw a few people taking some pictures of the technical things You may have some technical questions or program questions for our librarian and we have Let me check my timer here. We have about ten minutes. So