Google Liquid Galaxy Support
By Benjamin Goldstein
September 30, 2010
End Point is tremendously excited to announce our turnkey installation and support service for Google’s Liquid Galaxy. Google has just today announced the release of Liquid Galaxy to the general public and to its Earth Enterprise customers. Liquid Galaxy is an astounding 3D immersive environment for Google Earth. End Point’s turnkey installation service includes on-site booth construction, precise installation of compute nodes and displays, plus expert configuration of operating system, networking, and Google Earth client software. End Point also provides support for upgrades and troubleshooting.
End Point has extensive hands-on experience with installing and configuring Liquid Galaxy. We’ve installed a number of Galaxies for Google itself in the US and abroad. We also recently installed the Liquid Galaxy unveiled this month at the San Jose Tech Museum’s spectacular new Silicon Valley Innovation Gallery. This is the first Liquid Galaxy deployed outside of a Google office or trade show.
Google’s Liquid Galaxy is 3-dimensional without your having to wear funny glasses. Google’s reference implementation specifies a circular booth 12’4” (3.75m) in diameter with 8 large high definition displays mounted in portrait orientation around the interior of the booth’s perimeter. Each display is driven by its own computer. You simply walk in (bring some friends if you want) and you’re inside of Google Earth.
If the screen in front of you is a northern view, then the screens to your right show what’s to the east and the screens to your left the west. That’s unless you’ve navigated yourself to an upside down position! When you dive down to ground level and navigate through Google Earth’s 3D building models, not only do you get to see what is in front of you, but you see what is to the side also. (You’d see what is behind you too, except that the booth has an open doorway.)
The experience of Liquid Galaxy is unique and marvelous because your peripheral vision comes alive in it. Not until you’ve been inside Liquid Galaxy can you truly appreciate how fundamental and useful our peripheral vision is to our overall visual experience. The world has more than two dimensions, so it’s particularly appropriate that Google Earth now does too.
See the End Point Liquid Galaxy website for more information. We’ve posted a nice YouTube video made by Eugenia Loli-Queru with Jason Holt, Google’s lead engineer for the project, at the helm.
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