VisionPort at University of Tokyo, New York office: An Exhibition for Peace on August 6th and 7th

2022-07-26T00:00:00+00:00

Ground Zero, Hiroshima, Japan – August 6th, 1945. Visualized by the lab of Professor Hidenori Watanave.

Technology and education go hand in hand, and the VisionPort platform is being used every day to make that connection.

We are extremely honored to be able to contribute to the first exhibition at the University of Tokyo’s New York office, “Convergence of Peace Activities: Connecting and Integrating by Technologies”.

It is said that those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it, and in that vein, the exhibition, drawing from the work of Professor Hidenori Watanave, will be using the VisionPort platform to educate viewers on the realities of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on the date of the 77th anniversary of the first nuclear weapon used in war.

The team has been collecting and colorizing photographic material from the aftermath of the bombings for over 10 years. The exhibition will combine that work with interviews and writings from survivors on a GIS canvas to allow attendees to see what it looked like and to hear from those who were there.

The lab will also be presenting the work they have been doing covering the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Day by day they collect the latest images from the war, identify the locations of the events and use geospatial data to map and present it in an interactive, 3D environment.

Invasion of Ukraine, provided by the labs of Professors Hidenori Watanave and Taichi Furuhashi.

The exhibition will serve to show us where we have been and where we are now, in hopes of being a “convergence,” a place to connect and use all of our available information and technologies so that we may begin a new era of understanding and in turn, peace.

The exhibition will also feature work done by Co-Op Peace Map, Mainichi Newspaper and the University of Kyoto.

The educational work that the University of Tokyo is doing with the VisionPort platform is inspiring and we look forward to being there to see it in memoriam of that fateful day.

Register here and join us for this viewing on August 6th and 7th at the University of Tokyo’s New York office located at 145 W. 57th St., 21st Floor, New York, NY 10019.

For more information about VisionPort, email sales@visionport.com or visit visionport.com.

Images and photography provided by the University of Tokyo, the department of Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, the lab of Professor Hidenori Watanave, and the lab of Professor Taichi Furuhashi.

Liquid Galaxy at Austin Startup Week

2018-12-19T00:00:00+00:00

We brought the Liquid Galaxy to Austin Startup Week a few weeks ago. This event combines developers, demonstrations, and some great pub crawls for the week. This year, ASW had a particular focus on VR, AR, and data visualization, which made it a great fit for us to show off the Liquid Galaxy platform. We set up our 7-screen system near the event registration, and introduced the technology to hundreds of visitors and dignitaries. We want to specifically thank our gracious hosts at Capital Factory, the main sponsor of ASW.

The highlight of this year’s conference is the US Army’s Futures Command setting up a new HQ in Austin to be accompanied with a new working lab at Capital Factory. This Command has a mission of finding new interesting technology and adapting it to solve issues facing soldiers in the field. We had some great conversations with many of the people involved. Of particular note, visitors enjoyed the presentations we had that combine map visualizations, 3D objects, and 4K video, all seen simultaneously. We are firmly confident that the Liquid Galaxy can play a role in simulation training, GIS visualization, and mission planning for the relevant agencies.

The Liquid Galaxy was a great success with the pub crawl portion of ASW—we can show complex 3D models with the Unity engine, and many of the new startups are working on VR tools. Being able to see VR on a room-sized scale impressed our visitors. Here also, we anticipate some good partnerships and cooperative developments to be coming soon. The pub crawls, as with all things in Austin, were awesome.

A few more photos of the event in parting:

Visitors enjoyed exploring their own office views.

Our initial setup at ASW, showing a simulated Mars Base. The US Air Force representatives at the conference paid particular interest to these sorts of simulated environments.

End Point at Google for Kenya

2018-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

Last month End Point had the great pleasure of exhibiting a Liquid Galaxy in Kenya’s capital city of Nairobi at the first Google for Kenya event.

Kenya is home to the first Google office in Africa (opened 11 years ago) and Google is planning on growing its involvement in the country. The event was part of Google’s Next Billion Users initiative, and centered around some big announcements for Kenya. Google announced major financial commitments to a broad range of goals aimed at spurring innovation and they also announced the release of Street View for Kenya!

In July we did a similar Next Billion Users Google event in Lagos, Nigeria. The Nigerian event was open to the public and had around 7,000 guests so it was a nice change of pace to have only a couple hundred guests at the Google for Kenya event.

The Liquid Galaxy was center stage and guests took turns finding Street Views of their houses/apartments and then looking through the spectacular Street View scenes from across the country. The Street View of the Tusks of Mombasa seemed to put a smile on everyone’s face. My personal favorite was a panosphere taken from a drone of the great wildebeest migration in Maasai Mara.

Guests asked questions about what Street View actually gets used for and it made me think about how ubiquitous it has become in the United States. Just last week I used Street View to verify an address and find parking near my voting location. These things sound small but are immensely valuable when you need them. I’m sure Kenyans will find all sorts of new ways to get value from this Google service.

We were thrilled to have the opportunity to share Liquid Galaxy, and support Google for Kenya in leveraging the platform to explore local regions and homes. Google had previously installed the Liquid Galaxy in five different continents (North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia), and these two recent events are the first in which Google has used Liquid Galaxy in Africa.

The Liquid Galaxy is currently being used at the Google Kenya office, and Google plans on finding opportunities to use the system in other regions of Africa. We look forward to providing our 24/7 remote system support in the meantime, and also look forward to supporting Google in Africa during future events!

Liquid Galaxy at Google for Nigeria

2018-08-06T00:00:00+00:00

Over the years, Liquid Galaxy has taken us to many a far-flung locale, but few of us at End Point were expecting a Liquid Galaxy installation in Africa. Yet that is exactly what happened: In conjunction with Google’s “Next Billion Users” initiative, End Point was invited to install a Liquid Galaxy at “Google for Nigeria” in Lagos, Africa’s largest city, a teeming metropolis of 21 million souls.

With the challenge of getting our equipment to Nigeria and hearsay about intermittent Internet and electricity, we had more than our usual concern about making sure our Liquid Galaxy would function reliably for the event. And given the US Department of State’s warnings about health and safety, the trip would be more involved than most. However, End Point engineer Will Plaut fairly leapt at the chance. More than 20 hours of flying, a bevy of vaccines and a host of visa procedures were no match for Will’s intrepid spirit and sense of adventure — he even took it upon himself to hunt down the difficult-to-find Yellow Fever vaccine in Greenville, South Carolina.

But before simply sending Will off to fend for himself amidst the hubbub of Lagos, the list of logistics problems seemed unending. The first order of business was to find a local contact to advise us both on the vagaries of shipping and customs as well as to help our engineer set the system up, keep him out of harm’s way, and give him a real taste of Nigeria. A tall order. Luckily, End Point had a personal contact who put us in touch with Olufunmilola “Afeez” Atiku, fixer extraordinaire. Afeez was not only able to explain to us the protocol for shipping (the LG could not be simply shipped to the airport in Lagos, then picked up, but had to be entrusted to a local shipper), he also arranged for Will to be picked up at the airport, whisked through customs, and accompanied & assisted 24×7 for the next 6 days by the joyous and trusted Taofik. The driving chores were delegated to an aptly named fellow known only as “Happiness”.

In the meantime, Joanne Tipton of End Point was beginning the first of dozens of phone calls with Cody Ressler and Ben Witten to find a US-based shipper who could actually get our system to Lagos in time for the event. As with all international events, the nearer the deadline, the more time grows magically short. When our normal shipper informed us, at the 11th hour, that they would be unable to get the LG to Nigeria in time to get through customs, time became an even scarcer commodity. Said time-crunch unfortunately corresponded with Joanne’s weekend and Cody’s vacation, but both of them dropped what they were doing and began the frantic hunt for both a new US-based shipper and a Nigerian shipper who could receive, store, and deliver the system to the event venue. One spent weekend later, DHL agreed to retrieve the system from our usual courier in Atlanta and ship it to Nigeria where the WhatsApp-using (sometimes as many as 5 messages per hour!) Nigerian shipper known only as Shekoni would take care of the rest.

All of which came to pass. Whereas we expected considerable delays at customs, Shekoni sent us the following photos, the morning after arrival of the LG in Nigeria, showing our system neatly unpacked, de-palletized, and sitting in the middle of the Landmark Centre.

Last year, in April 2017, Google came to Nigeria to announce the release of its offline app, YouTube Go. At this year’s Google for Nigeria event, the emphasis was on Google Go, a search app built specifically for the African market to address the issue of slow Internet connectivity. While cell phones are everywhere in Africa, the Internet is not yet able to deal with demand, so something like Google Go seems like the answer. It weighs less than 5 megabytes, functions optimally on low-RAM smartphones, and is able to save up to 40% data by using a new compression technology to make search and web experiences faster.

At Google for Nigeria, the Blend event production agency of Cape Town, South Africa, was charged with creating an immersive playground, hence the invitation to End Point for a Liquid Galaxy. Thankfully, Google installed a special 700 Mbps line (routed through London, as Google Station will be in the future); electricity was provided by a generator in order to avoid the periodic outages of the public electric service. For this event, the scope of content was limited to showing Google Street View, but the effect was magnified by the fact that, for many of the attendees, this was the first time they had ever experienced Street View, and they were duly wowed. No less than the Vice President of Nigeria, Professor Oluyemi Oluleke “Yemi” Osinbajo, came by personally to give the Liquid Galaxy a drive!

Thanks to our End Point support team working into the wee hours of the morning, the event went off without a hitch, and Will was able to concentrate on the throngs of people anxious to explore with the LG. While the usual flock of corporate and government attendees were in good number, Will reported, “a good portion of the people there were individuals looking to learn about the high-tech things they are interested in and working on. I heard lots of ‘Where’s the AI booth?’ and ‘Hey, is there anything about machine learning?’”.

We were all struck by the incredible energy and resourcefulness of the Nigerians we dealt with, a fact not lost on the many large companies moving into Nigeria to tap into the untold potential of the burgeoning tech scene; a reflection of the same energy Will found in his travels around Lagos: “I really loved the resourcefulness I saw everywhere. People with hair salons that consisted of a broken piece of mirror and a chair with an umbrella over it, people carrying around sewing machines, and everything you can imagine for sale while you are stuck in traffic.”

Seizing the opportunity, Will decided to stay on for a couple of days after the event and explore the city and its music, accompanied and advised by Taofik. I had visions of Fela Kuti and King Sunny Ade, but Afeez laughed at me on the phone saying, “That is only for old dudes. It’s all hip-hop now.” My deception was great, but Will mightily enjoyed the social clubs he visited with Taofik and almost laughed at my question “Did people dance at these places?”, saying that Nigerians dance whenever and wherever they can.

Will is now back in Tennessee with nothing more than a bad case of jetlag. Joanne and Cody had begun the hard work of organizing a return shipment when a last minute (Sunday) email from Google arrived asking if the Liquid Galaxy had left Africa. It seems Google was so enthused by their experience in Lagos that they are planning a reprise in Kenya in October, and see no way of doing so without the Liquid Galaxy. Since the cost of continuing to rent the system adds up with multiple events, Google is now planning to simply purchase the LG used at Google for Nigeria.

Stay tuned for future developments!

Liquid Galaxy Supporting the Community During Natural Disaster

2018-06-07T00:00:00+00:00

Earthquakes and explosive eruptions are currently rocking Kīlauea’s summit crater, creating concerns for the local community. Fortunately, NOAA’s Mokupāpapa Discovery Center in Hilo is stepping up to educate the greater community with the help of their Liquid Galaxy system, which was created and is supported by End Point.

While there is active volcanic activity and explosive eruptions continue at the Kīlauea summit, Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park is mostly closed to its nearly two million annual visitors. NOAA’s Mokupāpapa Discovery Center in Hilo is helping to support the community affected by the lava flows and eruption at Kīlauea summit and along its Lower East Rift Zone by hosting Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park Service rangers and interpretive staff.

To lessen the impact on park visitors and to provide a venue to learn about the current eruption, NOAA’s Mokupāpapa Discovery Center in Hilo is hosting a pop-up park center, with daily ranger talks at 10 am and 2 pm, on-site rangers throughout the day, and support of park programming. NOAA National Weather Service meteorologists from the Hilo Data Collection Office are also participating in the daily 10 am briefing to provide information on ash fall, wind direction, and air quality hazards.

The briefings are being given using End Point’s Liquid Galaxy as a visualization and briefing tool to show where the current lava flows are and where ash fall may occur from the explosive eruptions at the summit. Understanding where the activity is taking place, as well as understanding what areas are potentially dangerous, has been critical to keeping the public safe from this spectacular natural event. Liquid Galaxy is proving to be an excellent tool to show both the geography and the geology, and previous historic flows on Hawaiʻi Island.

Our End Point support team is monitoring this Liquid Galaxy system 24×7 to ensure there are no disruptions in service for the public’s education. Although the need for our system under these circumstances is unfortunate, we are very thankful that we can lend a hand to support the community through the course of this natural disaster.

Both Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park and Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument are UNESCO World Heritage Sites. These sites serve to interpret the natural and cultural features that represent the birth of the Hawaiian islands, and their return to the sea far to the northwest in the Monument.

The Liquid Galaxy can help tell the entire story in one place—with interpretive staff from the Park and the Monument—while providing critical information to the public about the active flow and safety issues.

Liquid Galaxy at EarthX Conference

2018-05-02T00:00:00+00:00

We had the unique opportunity to participate in the EarthX conference held this week in Dallas, Texas. EarthX brings over 100,000 visitors together to hear about environmentalism, recycling, ocean preservation, sustainability tech advances, and how to be good custodians of our Earth.

We set up 3 systems at the conference to give the widest coverage for the wonderful content developed by our partners:

NOAA showcased new 360 photos from Palmyra Atoll, a tiny dot of land 1000 miles due south of Hawaii in the middle of a National Marine Reserve, along with an incredible 360° video from Christophe Baillache and Sophie Ansel.
Blue Abyss showcased their new 50-meter deep diving tank soon to be installed in the UK, where they will support training for space travel or run oceanic simulations under very controlled conditions.
We also showed “Diving with Sylvia”, a VR game built by Cascade Game Foundry for the Oculus Rift. This was tricky, as it involved simultaneous visualizations to both the VR goggles wearer as well as the 7 screens of the Liquid Galaxy.

While at the conference, we attended a wonderful gala with Sylvia Earle, one of the premiere environmental scientists who focuses specifically on oceanic wildlife and how to preserve what she calls “Hope Spots” around the world where biodiversity is especially rich and especially at risk. (Yes, we have a presentation that flies to all these “blue hope” spots.)

Sylvia and other speakers emphasized the need for telling the story of these places, as a good story is key to raising awareness, building consensus around preservation, and leading the way for policy change. This same need of telling a strong environmental message was echoed by our friends at NOAA, the National Marine Sanctuary Organization, and even the President of Palau, a Pacific Island nation who has taken the lead and now preserves 80% of its waters from fishing or exploitation!

Our 3 Liquid Galaxy systems at the conference performed admirably and fulfilled this story-telling mission beautifully. We showed full resolution 360° movies of Palmyra Atoll, multimedia presentations about sustainable housing, and even won the accolades of the conference sponsors who were astounded at the unique immersive experience that a Liquid Galaxy can provide. I personally stood next to our 7-screen system for most of the conference, and often heard variants of “Wow! I saw this same content on my desktop earlier, but this is totally different! Amazing!” Cool.

We now have a wealth of environmental presentations available for our Liquid Galaxy partners should any of them wish to load the content on their own systems. We also now have many many new friends in the environmental movement, and hope to work with them more at future conferences and events.

See more use cases at our Liquid Galaxy website!

Liquid Galaxy at the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics

2018-02-13T00:00:00+00:00

The Winter Olympics are in full swing in Pyeongchang, Korea! We’re proud to note that we have a full Liquid Galaxy running onsite there as well.

Our Seoul-based partner, AZero, has been working closely with KEPCO, the Korean power company, to bring Liquid Galaxies to several of their visitor centers scattered throughout South Korea. KEPCO utilizes the Liquid Galaxy to showcase their infrastructure elements of hydroelectric dams, large power stations, and substations to show how they bring electricity to the 40M+ people living in South Korea.

As a lead corporate sponsor of the games, KEPCO wanted to bring that same story to the Olympic venues. AZero developed new content that highlights the Olympic venues and Pyeongchang area and deployed the Liquid Galaxy at the Gangneung branch office (near Pyeongchang, and also a host of several Olympic venues).

Now that the games are in full swing, KEPCO is bringing VIPs, government officials, and a global list of business contacts to their center, and is using the Liquid Galaxy as the central platform to present their accomplishments.

If you’re in Pyeongchang, why not take some time to see this incredible immersive platform?

End Point is looking forward to further cooperation with AZero in Korea, as well as our partners in Japan for the 2020 Olympic games that will be held in Tokyo.

President of UN General Assembly Thanks End Point

2017-11-17T00:00:00+00:00

The President of UN General Assembly, Peter Thomson, thanked End Point for supporting the Ocean Conference, which was held at the United Nations Headquarters this past summer to bring attention and action to saving the world’s oceans.

End Point’s Liquid Galaxy helped bring to life “Reconnecting Humanity to the Sea,” an exhibition meant to showcase the beauty of the ocean and the challenges it faces today. End Point created the presentation’s content and showcased it at the conference.

“We were very pleased to see End Point’s Liquid Galaxy used to promote a hopeful future for the world’s oceans. It’s very satisfying to see our technology used to make an important story that much more compelling.”

Rick Peltzman
CEO, End Point

This UN press release explains more about the conference and its results:
“UN Ocean Conference wraps up with actions to restore ocean health, protect marine life”

See the letter:

Liquid Galaxy at ASTC 2017

2017-10-18T00:00:00+00:00

End Point is pleased to be participating in ASTC 2017, alongside our partners BWC Visual Technology. ASTC, which stands for the Association of Science-Technology Centers, is holding their annual conference at The Tech Museum of Innovation, located in San Jose, CA. We were excited to hear that the conference takes place at The Tech Museum, as we have a Liquid Galaxy set up in the museum!

A 3-screen desktop Liquid Galaxy display will be set up by Liquid Galaxy Engineer Josh Ausborne at Booth 1103. This display will be showcasing content that includes Sketchfab and Unity 3D Models, Cesium content with interactive weather data, 360 panoramic video, Google Earth/Google Streetview content, and engaging presentations about National Parks and National Marine Sanctuaries.

We are very excited to be showcasing our technology with BWC Visual Technology. BWC is a distributor and licensed re-seller of state-of-the-art, interactive exhibit technology for museums and science centers. We have great respect for their team and technologies, and are excited to be showcasing Liquid Galaxy with them.

Liquid Galaxy is currently featured in many science and technology centers around the world. Please view the information featured below to learn more. This handout will be available to all attendees at ASTC, and can be picked up at booth 1103.

Liquid Galaxy Goes to Chile for IMPAC4

2017-09-26T00:00:00+00:00

Marine Protected Areas: Bringing the people and ocean together

Earlier this month, The Marine Conservation Institute and the Waitt Foundation brought a Liquid Galaxy to Chile to showcase interactive and panoramic ocean content at the Fourth International Marine Protected Areas Congress in La Serena. This conference was a convergence of marine biologists, ocean agencies, and environmentalists from around the globe to discuss the state of and future development initiatives of Marine Protected Areas worldwide.

The Marine Conservation Institute is working on a mapping project called MPAtlas that visually catalogs the development of Marine Protected Areas across the globe as well as the Global Ocean Refuge System which pushes for elevated standards for Marine Protected Areas and advocates for a 30% protected marine ecosystem by 2030.

mpatlas.org

We built new content to showcase the GLORES areas in Google Earth as well as data visualizations of the global system of Marine Protected Areas. In addition, we collected any past oceanographic related content we’ve developed for the Liquid Galaxy platform. This included underwater panoramic media from the Catlin Seaview Survey, Mission Blue Hope Spots, Google Street View collections of underwater photos such as this project which catalogs the Great Barrier Reef.

Min @marcelomena prueba Liquid Galaxy. Muestra imágenes en directo del fondo marino y permite fiscalizar áreas marinas protegidas #IMPAC4 pic.twitter.com/PxJ4c6Nxxd
— Min. Medio Ambiente (@MMAChile) September 5, 2017

Minister of the Environment Marcelo Mena Carrasco gives the
Liquid Galaxy a go

Aside from showcasing this curated content, the Liquid Galaxy served as a comprehensive interactive tool for scientists and environmentalists to showcase their research areas during the break periods between lectures and events occurring at the Congress. Since the Liquid Galaxy utilizes the entire globe, conference attendees were able to free fly to their respective research and/or proposed protected areas as an impromptu presentation aid and further explore underwater terrain and panoramic media in their location.

Liquid Galaxy at IMPAC4 — La Serena, Chile 2017

The Liquid Galaxy platform is featured in museums and aquariums around the world, and we are thrilled that it is being used as a tool to study and conserve oceans and nature. We recently had the opportunity to participate in The Ocean Conference at the United Nations, and are excited the system continues to be utilized to study and prevent future detrimental changes to our planet. We hope to have more opportunities to create content geared toward nature conservation, as well as opportunities to share the Liquid Galaxy with environmentalists so that the system will continue be used as a tool for visualizing research data in new and interesting ways.

Liquid Galaxy at 2017 BOMA International Annual Conference & Expo

2017-07-03T00:00:00+00:00

We just returned from Nashville after bringing Liquid Galaxy to the 2017 BOMA International Annual Conference & Expo. Commercial real estate has always been a seamless fit for Liquid Galaxy due to the system’s ability to showcase real estate and property data in an interactive and panoramic setting. Within real estate, Liquid Galaxy was first used by CBRE and has since been adopted by Hilton, JLL, and Prologis to name a few.

In preparation for BOMA (Building Owners and Managers Association), we prepared sample commercial real estate content on our content management system to be displayed on the Liquid Galaxy. This included the creation of content about Hudson Yards, the new development being built in lower Manhattan.

The content that was created demonstrates how brokers and directors at commercial real estate companies can tell an immersive, panoramic, and interactive story to their potential clients and investors. Future developments can be shown in developing areas, and with the content management system you can create stories that include videos, images, and 3D models of these future developments. The following video demonstrates this well:

We were able to effectively showcase our ability to incorporate 3D models and mapping layers at BOMA through the use of Google Earth, Cesium, ArcGIS, Unity, and Sketchfab. We were also able to pull data and develop content for neighboring booths and visitors, demonstrating what an easy and data-agnostic platform Liquid Galaxy can be.

We’re very excited about the increasing traction we have in the real estate industry, and hope our involvement with BOMA will take that to the next level. If you’d like to learn more about Liquid Galaxy, please visit our website.

Liquid Galaxy at The Ocean Conference

2017-06-19T00:00:00+00:00

End Point had the privilege of participating in The Ocean Conference at the United Nations, hosted by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), these past two weeks. The health of the oceans is critical, and The Ocean Conference, the first United Nations conference on this issue, presents a unique and invaluable opportunity for the world to reverse the precipitous decline of the health of the oceans and seas with concrete solutions.

A Liquid Galaxy was set up in a prominent area on the main floor of the United Nations. End Point created custom content for the Ocean Conference, using the Liquid Galaxy’s Content Management System. Visiting diplomats and government officials were able to experience this content—Liquid Galaxy’s interactive panoramic setup allows visitors to feel immersed in the different locations, with video and information spanning their periphery.

Liquid Galaxy content created for The Ocean Conference included:

A study of the Catlin Seaview Survey and how the world’s coral reefs are changing
360 panoramic underwater videos
All Mission Blue Ocean Hope Spots
A guided tour of the Monaco Explorations 3 Year Expedition
National Marine Sanctuaries around the United States

We were grateful to be able to create content for such a good cause, and hope to be able to do more good work for the IUCN and the UN! If you’d like to learn more, please visit our Liquid Galaxy website.

From left to right: Dan Thomas, Susan Thomas, Sylvia Earle, Jenifer Austin, David Koch, Trammel Crowe.

Successful First GEOINT Symposium for End Point Liquid Galaxy

2017-06-16T00:00:00+00:00

This past week, End Point attended GEOINT Symposium to showcase Liquid Galaxy as an immersive panoramic GIS solution to GEOINT attendees and exhibitors alike.

At the show, we showcased Cesium integrating with ArcGIS and WMS, Google Earth, Street View, Sketchfab, Unity, and panoramic video. Using our Content Management System, we created content around these various features so visitors to our booth could take in the full spectrum of capabilities that the Liquid Galaxy provides.

Additionally, we were able to take data feeds for multiple other booths and display their content during the show! Our work served to show everyone at the conference that the Liquid Galaxy is a data-agnostic immersive platform that can handle any sort of data stream and offer data in a brilliant display. This can be used to show your large complex data sets in briefing rooms, conference rooms, or command centers.

Given the incredible draw of the Liquid Galaxy, the GEOINT team took special interest in our system and formally interviewed Ben Goldstein in front of the system to learn more! You can view the video of the interview here:

We look forward to developing the relationships we created at GEOINT, and hope to participate further in this great community moving forward. If you would like to learn more please visit our Liquid Galaxy website!

End Point Liquid Galaxy at GEOINT Symposium

2017-05-22T00:00:00+00:00

End Point Liquid Galaxy will be coming to San Antonio to participate in GEOINT 2017 Symposium. We are excited to demonstrate our geospatial capabilities on an immersive and panoramic 7 screen Liquid Galaxy system. We will be exhibiting at booth #1012 from June 4-7.

On the Liquid Galaxy, complex data sets can be explored and analyzed in a 3D immersive fly-through environment. Presentations can highlight specific data layers combined with video, 3D models, and browsers for maximum communications efficiency. The end result is a rich, highly immersive, and engaging way to experience your data.

Liquid Galaxy’s extensive capabilities include ArcGIS, Cesium, Google Maps, Google Earth, LIDAR point clouds, realtime data integration, 360 panoramic video, and more. The system always draws huge crowds at conferences; people line up to try out the system for themselves.

End Point has deployed Liquid Galaxy systems around the world. This includes many high profile clients, such as Google, NOAA, CBRE, National Air & Space Museum, Hyundai, and Barclays. Our clients utilize our content management system to create immersive and interactive presentations that tell engaging stories to their users.

GEOINT is hosted and produced by the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF). It is the nation’s largest gathering of industry, academia, and government to include Defense, Intelligence and Homeland Security communities as well as commercial, Fed/Civil, State and Local geospatial intelligence stakeholders.

We look forward to meeting you at booth #1012 at GEOINT. In the meantime, if you have any questions please visit our Liquid Galaxy website!

Smartrac’s Liquid Galaxy at National Retail Federation

2017-01-25T00:00:00+00:00

Last week, Smartrac exhibited at the retail industry’s BIG Show, NRF 2017, using a Liquid Galaxy with custom animations to showcase their technology.

Smartrac provides data analytics to retail chains by tracking physical goods with NFC and Bluetooth tags that combine to track goods all the way from the factory to the distribution center to retail stores. It’s a complex but complete solution. How best to visualize all that data and show the incredible value that Smartrac brings? Seven screens with real time maps in Cesium, 3D store models in Unity, and browser-based dashboards, of course. End Point has been working with Smartrac for a number of years as a development resource on their SmartCosmos platform, helping them with UX and back-end database interfaces. This work included development of REST-based APIs for data handling, as well as a Virtual Reality project utilizing the Unity game engine to visualize data and marketing materials directly on several platforms including the Oculus Rift, the Samsung Gear 7 VR, and WebGL. Bringing that back-end work forward in a highly visible platform for the retail conference was a natural extension for them, and the Liquid Galaxy fulfilled that role perfectly. The large Liquid Galaxy display allowed Smartrac to showcase some of their tools on a much larger scale.

For this project, End Point deployed two new technologies for the Liquid Galaxy:

Cesium Maps - Smartrac had two major requirements for their data visualizations: show the complexity of the solution and global reach, while also making the map data offline wherever possible to avoid the risk of sketchy Internet connections at the convention center (a constant risk). For this, we deployed Cesium instead of Google Earth, as it allowed for a fully offline tileset that we could store locally on the server, as well as providing a rich data visualization set (we’ve shown other examples before).
Unity3D Models - Smartrac also wanted to show how their product tracking works in a typical retail store. Rather than trying to wire a whole solution during the short period for a convention, however, they made the call to visualize everything with Unity, a very popular 3D rendering engine. Given the multiple screens of the Liquid Galaxy, and our ability to adjust the view angle for each screen in the arch around the viewers, this Unity solution would be very immersive and able to tell their story quite well.

Smartrac showcased multiple scenes that incorporated 3D content with live data, labels superimposed on maps, and a multitude of supporting metrics. End Point developers worked on custom animation to show their tools in a engaging demo. During the convention, Smartrac had representatives leading attendees through the Liquid Galaxy presentations to show their data. Video of these presentations can be viewed below.

Smartrac’s Liquid Galaxy received positive feedback from everyone who saw it, exhibitors and attendees alike. Smartrac felt it was a great way to walk through their content, and attendees both enjoyed the content and were intrigued by the display on which they were seeing the content. Many attendees who had never seen Liquid Galaxy inquired about it.

If you’d like to learn more about Liquid Galaxy or new projects we are working on or having custom content developed, please visit our Liquid Galaxy website or contact us here.

Liquid Galaxy at CES

2017-01-10T00:00:00+00:00

This past week, End Point attended and exhibited at CES, a global consumer electronics and consumer technology tradeshow that takes place every January in Las Vegas, Nevada. End Point’s Liquid Galaxy was set up in the Gigabyte exhibit at Caesar’s Palace.

Gigabyte invited us to set up a Liquid Galaxy in their exhibit space because they believe the Liquid Galaxy is the best show-piece for their Brix hardware. The Brix, or “Brix GTX Pro” in this case, offers an Intel i7 6th gen processor and NVIDIA GTX950 graphics (for high performance applications, such as gaming) hardware in a small and sleek package (12 in. length, 9 in. width, 1 in. height). Since each Brix GTX Pro offers 4 display outputs, we only needed two Brix to run all 7 screens and touchscreen, and one Brix to power the headnode!

This was the first time we have powered a Liquid Galaxy with Gigabyte Brix units, and the hardware proved to be extremely effective. It is a significantly sleeker solution than hardware situated in a server rack. It is also very cost-effective.

We created custom content for Gigabyte on our Content Management System. An video of one of our custom presentations can be viewed below. We built the presentation so the the GTX Pro product webpage was on the left-most screen, and the GTX Pro landing webpage was on the right-most screen. A custom Gigabyte video built for CES covered the center three screens. The Gigabyte logo was put on the 2nd screen to the left. In the background, the system was set to orbit on Google Earth. This presentation built for Gigabyte, which includes graphics, webpages, videos, and KML, demonstrates many of the capabilities of End Point’s Content Management System and the Liquid Galaxy.

In addition to being a visually dazzling display tool for Gigabyte to show off to its network of customers and partners, Liquid Galaxy was a fantastic way for Gigabyte to showcase the power of their Brix hardware. The opportunity to collaborate with Gigabyte on the Liquid Galaxy was a welcome one, and we look forward to further collaboration.

To learn more about the Liquid Galaxy, you can visit our Liquid Galaxy website or contact us here.

Liquid Galaxy at New York Tech Meetup

2016-01-04T00:00:00+00:00

On December 15th, End Point presented the Liquid Galaxy at New York Tech Meetup, the largest meetup group in the world. End Point Co-Founder/President Ben Goldstein and I gave a five minute overview and then answered questions from the audience for another five minutes. At the conclusion of the presentation portion of the event, attendees went to the after-party, where we had a full Liquid Galaxy system set up for attendees to experience for themselves.

I opened up the presentation by speaking about where the Liquid Galaxy is being utilized (corporate offices, museums, and commercial enterprises around the world), and about the setup of the system (large paneled HDTVs, a touchscreen, 3D joystick, and 3 rack-mount servers). I talked about how the Liquid Galaxy was originally a tool designed to view Google Earth in an immersive setting, but from there End Point has expanded the Liquid Galaxy’s capabilities to make it a tool for educational and commercial use, marketing, sales, and research.

I went on to explain how End Point’s Content Management System gives users the ability to tell their story and show information and data points on the system. You easily can include images, panoramic videos, KML and other sorts of overlays. By using your company’s GIS (Geographic Information System) data, you have an entirely new way of visualizing data, 3D models, and presenting demographic and other critical information to your target audience, while still providing the excitement of the immersive experience. This includes things like population density, property value data, bar graphs and more.

I closed by explaining how each of the screens is being calculated to match the physical angle of the display. When those displays are put in an arch around the viewers, the sense of immersion and depth comes alive to the point of giving a real sense of flight and place.

From here, Ben G. touched on some of the more technical elements of the Liquid Galaxy. He explained that the main applications running on the Liquid Galaxy are Google Earth, Street View, a local panoramic still image and video viewer, and End Point’s Content Management System.

Ben G. discussed remote support, and how when End Point deploys a new system, it monitors the system in a variety of ways, one of which is with screen captures. Screenshots are generated so End Point can see remotely what its customers are seeing on the ground.

Ben G. finished the talk by explaining the architecture of the typical Liquid Galaxy systems. The physical architecture has a headnode and a number of display nodes. The head node is plugged into the network and it serves as a NATing router for the display nodes which run on an internal LAN. The display nodes are blank machines that netboot from an ISO on the headnode. This makes it easy to remotely upgrade a system. End Point support personnel generate a new ISO on the headnode and restart the display nodes remotely.

Q&A Session

After our presentation, Ben G. and I were asked questions about the Liquid Galaxy. Some highlights:

“How does the Liquid Galaxy fit in the context of AR and VR?” Ben G. explained that one thing that distinguishes the Liquid Galaxy is the communal experience. Often with VR, the user is having an individual experience. We foresee combining with the LG with a VR headset, so that you will be able to display what you’re seeing on the headset right onto the LG.
“How is End Point engaging content creators for the platform?” There is a big, vibrant community that we want to integrate with. For a simple but useful example, cell phones can generate panoramas, which can be dropped into the CMS.

“Can you use the Liquid Galaxy to map an emergency before and after the event?” Ben G: Absolutely. We think the LG is an excellent display platform to show events as they are occurring. One of the things that’s great is the Liquid Galaxy takes in your peripheral vision, so if you have a spherical or panoramic collection tool then you can really see it on the system.
“How close to live data can you get?” The Liquid Galaxy is primarily being run with Google Earth at the moment. You can incorporate panoramic images, depending on what your data source is. If you’d like to incorporate a panoramic webcam, your info can display instantaneously on the LG.

During the after-party, attendees had the opportunity to free fly on the Liquid Galaxy, to view presentations, and to navigate around on Street View. Six members of End Point’s team were present, so attendees also had the opportunity to ask questions and to learn more about the system.

Liquid Galaxy at UNESCO in Paris

2015-11-09T00:00:00+00:00

The National Congress of Industrial Heritage of Japan (NCoIH) recently deployed a Liquid Galaxy at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, France. The display showed several locations throughout southern Japan that were key to her rapid industrialization in the late 19th and early 20th century. Over the span of 30 years, Japan went from an agrarian society dominated by Samurai still wearing swords in public to an industrial powerhouse, forging steel and building ships that would eventually form a world-class navy and an industrial base that still dominates many lead global industries.

End Point assisted by supplying the servers, frame, and display hardware for this temporary installation. The NCoIH supplied panoramic photos, historical records, and location information. Together using our Roscoe Content Management Application, we built out presentations that guided the viewer through several storylines for each location: viewers could see the early periods of Trial & Error and then later industrial mastery, or could view the locations by technology: coal mining, shipbuilding, and steel making. The touchscreen interface was custom-designed to allow a self-exploration among these storylines, and also showed thumbnail images of each scene in the presentations that, when touched, brought the viewer directly to that location and showed a short explanatory text, historical photos, as well as transitioning directly into Google Street View to show the preserved site.

From a technical point of view, End Point debuted several new features with this deployment:

New scene control and editing functionalities in the Roscoe Content Management System
A new touchscreen interface that shows presentations and scenes within a presentation in a compact, clean layout
A new Street View interface that allows the “pinch and zoom” map navigation that we all expect from our smart phones and tablets
Debut of the new ROS-based operating system, including new ROS-nodes that can control Google Earth, Street View, panoramic content viewers, browser windows, and other interfaces
Deployment of some very nice NEC professional-grade displays

Overall, the exhibit was a great success. Several diplomats from European, African, Asian, and American countries came to the display, explored the sites, and expressed their wonderment at the platform’s ability to bring a given location and history into such vivid detail. Japan recently won recognition for these sites from the overall UNESCO governing body, and this exhibit was a chance to show those locations back to the UNESCO delegates.

From here, the Liquid Galaxy will be shipped to Japan where it will be installed permanently at a regional museum, hopefully to be joined by a whole chain of Liquid Galaxy platforms throughout Japan showing her rich history and heritage to museum visitors.

Biennale Arte 2015 Liquid Galaxy Installation

2015-11-05T00:00:00+00:00

If there is anyone who doesn’t know about the incredible collections of art that the Google Cultural Institute has put together, I would urge them to visit google.com/culturalinstitute and be overwhelmed by their indoor and outdoor Street View tours of some of the world’s greatest museums. Along these same lines, the Cultural Institute recently finished doing a Street View capture of the interior of 70 pavilions representing 80 countries of the Biennale Arte 2015, in Venice, Italy. We, at End Point, were lucky enough to be asked to come along for the ride: Google decided that not only would this Street View version of the Biennale be added to the Cultural Institute’s collection, but that they would install a Liquid Galaxy at the Biennale headquarters, at Ca’ Giustinian on the Grand Canal, where visitors can actually use the Liquid Galaxy to navigate through the installations. Since the pavilions close in November 2015, and the Galaxy is slated to remain open until the end of January 2016, this will permit art lovers who missed the Biennale to experience it in a way that is astoundingly firsthand.

End Point basically faced two challenges during the Liquid Galaxy Installations for the Cultural Institute. The first challenge was to develop a custom touch screen that would allow users to easily navigate/choose among the many pavilions. Additionally, wanting to mirror the way the Google Cultural Institute presents content, both online, as well as on the wall at their Paris office, we decided to add a swipe-able thumbnail runway to the touch screen map which would appear once a given pavilion was chosen.

As we took on this project, it became evident to our R&D team that ordinary Street View wasn’t really the ideal platform for indoor pavilion navigation because of the sheer size and scope of the pavilions. For this reason, our team decided that a ROS-based spherical Street View would provide a much smoother navigating experience. The new Street View viewer draws Street View tiles inside a WebGL sphere. This is a dramatic performance and visual enhancement over the old Maps API based viewer, and can now support spherical projection, hardware acceleration, and seamless panning. For a user in the multi-screen Liquid Galaxy setting, this means, for the first time, being able to roll the view vertically as well as horizontally, and zoom in and out, with dramatically improved frame rates. The result was such a success that we will be rolling out this new Street View to our entire fleet.

The event itself consisted of two parts: at noon, Luisella Mazza, Google’s Head of Country Operations at the Cultural Institute, gave a presentation to the international press; as a result, we have already seen coverage emerge in ANSA, Arte.it, and more. This was followed by a 6PM closed door presentation to the Aspen Institute.

Using the Liquid Galaxy and other supports from the exhibition, Luisella spoke at length about the role of culture in what Google refers to as the “digital transformation”.

The Aspen Institute is very engaged with these questions of “whitherto”, and Luisella’s presentation was followed by a long, and lively, round table discussion on the subject.

We were challenged to do something cool here and we came through in a big way: our touchscreen design and functionality are the stuff of real creative agency work, and meeting the technical challenge of making Street View perform in a new and enhanced way not only made for one very happy client, but is the kind of technical breakthrough that we all dream of. And how great that we got to do it all in Venice and be at the center of the action!

NOAA Marine Sanctuaries in Liquid Galaxy

2015-10-26T00:00:00+00:00

End Point enjoys a strong presence in the aquarium and museum community with our ability to deploy the Liquid Galaxy display platform. Our content team recently embedded 14 graphic overlays in the Aquarium of the Pacific and Monterrey Bay National Marine Sanctuary Liquid Galaxy systems. These layers highlight National Marine Sanctuary PDF maps created by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The Office of National Marine Sanctuaries serves as the trustee for a network of 14 protected areas encompassing more than 170,000 square miles from American Samoa to the Florida Keys. As marine sanctuaries, however, these locations are not gong to see as many humans as Yosemite or Yellowstone. Embedding the maps on the Liquid Galaxy allows viewers to dynamically explore the marine sanctuary map and its relationship to the larger landscape in Google Earth, and brings these remote locations to many more interactions with the public.

We are happy to share some of the media that goes into these presentations: A short YouTube video featuring the Marine sanctuary overlays in Google Earth is here. If you would like to explore the marine sanctuaries overlays on your desktop in Google Earth, the .kmz files are hosted with Google Drive here.

Liquid Galaxy and the Coral Reefs of London

2015-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

Exploring coral reefs and studying the diverse species that live in them usually requires some travel. Most of the coral in the world lives in the Indo-Pacific region that includes the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia and the Pacific. The next largest concentration of reefs is in the Caribbean and Atlantic. Oh, and then there is London.

London, you say?

Yes, the one in England. No, not the coral attaching itself to oil and gas platforms in the North Sea, nor the deep water coral there—admittedly far away from London, but perhaps in the general vacinity on the globe. We’re talking about the heart of London, specifically Cromwell Road. Divers will need to navigate their ways there, but scuba gear and a boat won’t be required once they arrive. No worries! Divers can float right up to the Liquid Galaxy in the exhibit hall at The Natural History Museum. The museum opened CORAL REEFS: SECRET CITIES OF THE SEA on March 27th. and the exhibit runs through mid-September this year.

Actually, there are 3 Liquid Galaxies at the Natural History Museum in London to allow a maximum amount of exploration and a minimum of waiting in queue.

Last year, the Natural History Museum engaged End Point to provide an experience for their guests that will take them to coral reefs from around the globe. Working with panoramic images captured and provided to the exhibit by the XLCatlin SeaView Survey and at the direction of the curators of the exhibit, End Point prepared 3 Liquid Galaxy server stacks with the selected SeaView Survey reef dives for the exhibit. Each of the Liquid Galaxies has three high definition screens.

The screens are angled in toward the viewer to compensate for the distortion that can occur when viewing panoramic images on a flat screen. It is a bit like having a bay window on the nose of a submarine. This immersive experience is an unique feature of Liquid Galaxy. The 360 degree spherical field of view that is a panoramic photosphere will distort on a flat screen and present as a fisheye view of the image. Liquid Galaxy is designed to compensate for the geometry of a panoramic image and on the angled screens place the user’s point of view in the center of the image.

The mission for CORAL REEFS: SECRET CITIES OF THE SEA required a simple and reliable display solution. The solution for this exhibit at the Natural History Museum uses locally stored panoramic images rather than downloading the content. The Liquid Galaxy hardware is able to handle the XLCatlin SeaView Survey panospheres as a single image across the three screens to keep the technical needs of the exhibit simple, cost effective, and robust. With the imagery being stored locally, expensive bandwidth was not needed. A smaller inexpensive network connection is used so that the health and operation of the Liquid Galaxy systems can be monitored remotely. This is a feature that End Point has developed for all of our Liquid Galaxy clients. It is worth noting that since opening in March the exhibit has required almost no system intervention from End Point engineers. We are still monitoring the systems and should technical intervention be needed to keep the exhibit operating we are ready.

The unique ability to surround the viewer with imagery is what sets a Liquid Galaxy apart from a flat screen of any size. The Liquid Galaxy display provides context for the natural habitat of the 250 specimens and the live coral and fish that are also on display at the Museum. The Natural History Museum hopes to get guests so immersed in the imagery that they’re able to feel the importance of the coral reefs to the planet. We are glad that the museum recognized that End Point’s Liquid Galaxy products and services are a great choice when immersion is important to the mission.

Liquid Galaxy for Google.org at SXSW

2015-03-24T00:00:00+00:00

End Point enjoyed an opportunity to work with Google.org, who bought a Liquid Galaxy to show their great efforts, at last week’s SXSW conference in Austin. Google.org has a number of projects worldwide, all focused on how tech can bring about unique and inventive solutions for good. To showcase some of those projects, Google asked us to develop presentations for the Liquid Galaxy where people could fly to a given location, read a brief synopsis of the grantee organizations, and view presentations which included virtual flight animations, map overlays, and videos of the various projects.

Some of the projects included are as follows:

Charity:Water—The charity: water presentation included scenes featuring multi screen video of Scott Harrison (Founder/CEO) and Robert Lee (Director of Special Programs), and an animated virtual tour of charity: water well sites in Ethiopia.
World Wildlife Fund—The World Wildlife Fund presentation featured a virtual tour of the Bouba N’Djida National Park, Cameroon putting the viewer into the perspective of a drone patrolling the park for poachers. Additional scenes in the presentation revealed pathways of transport for illegal ivory from the park through intermediate stops in Nigeria and Hong Kong before reaching China.
Samasource—The Samasource presentation showed slums where workers start and the technology centers they are able to migrate to while serving a global network of technology clients.

But the work didn’t stop there! Google.org was also sharing the space with the XPrize opening gala on Monday night. For this event, we drew up a simple game where attendees could participate in various events around the room, receive coded answers at each station, and then enter their code into the Liquid Galaxy touchscreen. If successful, the 7-screen display whisked them to the Space Port in the Mojave, then into orbit. If the wrong code was entered, the participant got splashed into the Pacific Ocean. It was great fun!

The SXSW engagement is the latest in an ongoing campaign to bring attention to global challenges and how Google.org is helping solve those challenges. End Point enjoys a close working relationship with Google and Google.org. We relish the opportunity to bring immersive and inviting displays that convey a wealth of information to viewers in such an entertaining and engrossing manner.

This event ran for 2 days at the Trinity Hall venue just 1 block from the main SXSW convention center in downtown Austin, Texas.

Liquid Galaxy at the Ryder Cup 2014

2014-10-06T00:00:00+00:00

End Point was proud to present the Liquid Galaxy for the French Golf Federation at this year’s Ryder Cup in Gleneagles, Scotland. The French Golf Federation will be hosting the cup in 2018 at Le Golf National, which is just outside of Paris and is also the current venue of the French Open.

Throughout the event, thousands of people came in and tried out the Liquid Galaxy. The platform displayed one of its many hidden talents and allowed golf fans from around the world to find and show off their home courses. One of the most interesting things to witness was watching golf course designers accurately guess the date of the satellite imagery based on which course changes were present.

This deployment presented special challenges: a remote location (the bustling tented village adjacent to the course) with a combination of available hardware from our European partners and a shipment from our Tennessee office. Despite these challenges, we assembled the system, negotiated the required network connectivity, deployed the custom interface, and delivered a great display for our sponsoring partners. The event was a great success and all enjoyed the unseasonably mild Scottish weather.

Liquid Galaxy at the Economist World Ocean Summit

2014-03-03T00:00:00+00:00

The Liquid Galaxy with image capture equipment

End Point had the distinct privilege of providing a Liquid Galaxy to the Economist World Ocean Summit held in Half Moon Bay, California last week. Originally conceived as a Google Earth and Google Street View platform, the Liquid Galaxy is rapidly becoming a premiere display for ocean content as well. Google is partnering with NGOs and corporations that are actively working toward ocean sustainability. Together, these organizations capture and categorize a great deal of ocean content, with most of that content publicly available via Street View. Some of this equipment was on display next to the Liquid Galaxy: a Trekker camera for remote areas and an underwater camera provided by the Catlin Seaview Survey for capturing hi-definition panoramas underwater.

This deployment used a custom configuration with six large HDTVs arrayed in a curved 3x2 panorama. The Liquid Galaxy is able to show this content as a single large surface with geometrically-adjusted angles. In short, it’s like a bay window on a submarine. Viewers are able to navigate to different locations through a touchscreen interface, and then rotate and zoom in on detailed panoramic photos with a 6-axis controller.

End Point enjoys a close working relationship with Google, and is happy to provide a Liquid Galaxy for such events. Our engineer Neil assembled a custom frame to hold the 3x2 screen configuration (deployed for the first time here), tested all devices, adjusted viewing angles, and then deployed and supported the full rig onsite at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Half Moon Bay.

End Point Liquid Galaxy Projects at Google I/O 2013

2013-05-23T00:00:00+00:00

This last week End Point participated in the Google I/O conference for the third year in a row. As the lead agency for Liquid Galaxy development and deployment, our engineers were active in the development efforts for the two Liquid Galaxy systems that were showcased at the conference this year.

We sent two of our rock stars to the show, Kiel and Matt. This year both Liquid Galaxies used Google Maps API functionality in the browser rather than the stand-alone Google Earth app:

Treadmill-driven Google Trekker: Working with Sparks Online, this showed a treadmill connected to the Google Trekker Trails panoramic imagery. Walking on the treadmill moves the view forward through the Bright Angel Trail in Grand Canyon. The tricky part being the curves in the trail, especially switchbacks: with no mouse to adjust the view, how to keep the view on the path when the input (the movement of the treadmill) was just “straight forward”? Our engineer, Kiel, used functions around Maps API data to automatically calculate the “closest frame” that would be next in line, and then force-feeds it to the Trail View, so “forward” is always centered on the path, no matter if the next frame is actually five to ten degrees (or in the case of the switchbacks, up to 150 degrees) left or right of center.
WebGL Skydiving Game: In support of the creative agency Instrument, Matt provided expert consulting leading up to the show on the Liquid-Galaxy-enabling of the WebGL game demo Instrument developed that allows people to “skydive” down thru a series of rings suspended in mid-air. Maybe it’s just better to show the game:

End Point’s full support included equipment rental to Instrument for development, developing and configuring the new Liquid Galaxy used in the Skydiving game, setting up the Liquid Galaxies at the show, onsite support, and repacking of the systems at the conclusion of the conference. We make things as turnkey as possible.

Kiel said the following: “Google I/O is getting bigger, more interesting, and more packed every year. The GLASS track was a lot of fun”. Matt added “Google is as committed as ever to user experience, and they happily share all of their tricks with developers year after year.”

Matt and Kiel appreciated the hands-on support of Andreu Ibàñez, from End Point’s partner, Ponent 2002, in the physical setup of the Liquid Galaxies we installed at the show and his sharing in the staffing of the skydiving exhibit.

Feedback from show attendees was overwhelmingly positive, the whole Google Maps area drawing quite a crowd to take part in each experience.

End Point welcomes opportunities to work with creative agencies and event planners to build unique and compelling visualization experiences that utilize the Liquid Galaxy platform. Please contact us if you’ve got an idea. Also, see our Liquid Galaxy website to see some of the many uses for the system.