Multiview Google Earth / LG, single host?

[MikeW]

We've been running Google Earth / Liquid Galaxy in a five sided CAVE
(four walls and floor) driven by a five node cluster. It works great.

However, we have multi-wall systems where a single host drives
multiple walls. I would need Google Earth to create multiple windows
with independent (linked through LG) cameras to drive such a system.
Or, I'd need to run multiple instances of Google Earth on a single
host.

I don't know of a way to do this. Is it possible? How would I
configure indepented GE windows or instances through the setup file.
Thanks.

Mike

[Jason Holt]

Yes, the guys at End Point have figured out the sysadmin required to launch multiple instances of earth on a single machine (at least on Linux).  

[ki...@endpoint.com]

Google Earth (on Linux) does some checking outside of supplied environment
variables in an attempt to ensure that only one instance is running. However,
creating a different user for each instance you wish to run, then giving those
users access to the local Xorg server will allow you to keep most of the
application confined to each user's home directory. The last variable is
lock/cache files within /tmp - which can be tricky to handle, but making the
files unavailable to these non-privilaged users or making /tmp a hidden
per-process temporary mountpoint both seem to work fine in our testing.

Outside of Google Earth, there is still the networking bit to consider - do you
broadcast to different ports, different netmasks, or unicast to a ViewSync
relay.

Some code is already committed to the code.google.com/p/liquid-galaxy project
which can help, so browse there and feel free to continue discussion.

Good Luck!
--
Kiel Christofferson
End Point Corporation
http://www.endpoint.com

[MikeW]

Thanks guys. I appreciate the feedback. I should have mentioned
we're in a strictly Windows environment.

Mike

On Mar 20, 11:22 pm, k...@endpoint.com wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 01:39:49PM -0700, Jason Holt wrote:
> > Yes, the guys at End Point have figured out the sysadmin required to launch
> > multiple instances of earth on a single machine (at least on Linux).
>

[Andrew Leahy]

Hi,

The GE Plugin can be run multiple times in multiple browser windows on a Windows box. We sometimes run GE Plugin 3 or  more times across an Eyefinity rig for dev purposes, but we're not using it with ViewSync.

Until a JavaScript alternative to ViewSync is made available, you may be able to do something with multiple plugin drivers.ini's switch in and out at launch time for the appropriate wall ge.plugin.,. it get's messy pretty quickly!

Obviously running multiple GE instances (plugin or GEC) impacts the system performance, and for GE Plugins you have to wrap the plugin with your own UI controllers.

I think this type of configuration would be pretty well served by a "JavaScript Liquid Galaxy" it's on our Google Summer of Code Project Wish list!! http://code.google.com/p/liquid-galaxy/wiki/GSoC2012


Cheers, Andrew
eResearch / UWS

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