Live screen captures of the current system:
The Virtual Beluga Interactive runs on standard Pentium 4, 3Ghz with 2 GBs of memory and an Nvidia 7800 graphics card.

Note these live captures are low res and compressed and therefore lose much of their photorealism.

Current video:

Video 1 - f1c1m1.mov (18 MBs Quicktime file)
1 mother, 1 calf, 1 aggressive male, 1 interactive object (both to user and animals).

Video 2 - f3c1m2.mov (14 MBs Quicktime file)
3 females, 1 calf, 2 aggressive male, 1 interactive object (both to user and animals).

Video 3 - controls.mov (7 MBs Quicktime file)
demonstrating low level navigational parameters which sit above nodes.

Newer videos coming:

Longer interaction - belugaPod.mov (19 MBs Quicktime file)

Contact:

Steve DiPaola
Simon Fraser University
Vancouver, Canada
www.dipaola.org
ivizlab.sfu.ca

steve @ dipaola . org

This work addresses the scientific and design process issues of creating an extremely realistic 3D simulation of a wild beluga whale pod for a major aquarium that is situated next to a group of real beluga whales in an integrated marine mammal exhibit. The Virtual Beluga Interactive was conceived to better immerse and engage the visitors in complicated educational concepts about the life of wild belugas compared to what is typical possible via wall signage or a video display, thereby allowing them to ask deeper questions and hopefully have deeper insights into the life of beluga whales.

Our research areas are in adaptive design process (knowledge flow) and in intelligent systems design for socially based interactive visualization: ivizlab.sfu.ca.