Three Liquid Galaxy Projects Accepted for Google Summer of Code 2011

Posted by Adam Vollrath

Yesterday the student proposals accepted for the Google Summer of Code program were announced. The Liquid Galaxy Project, participating in the program for the first time, accepted three proposals. These projects will dramatically extend the functionality of the Liquid Galaxy system:

New Control Input Devices and Distributed GL Rendering -- Paul Hunkin, mentored by Andrew Leahy
Paul is a PhD student and has been running Liquid Galaxy on his university display wall for some time now. This project will initially target Microsoft's Kinect as an input device for Liquid Galaxy, and may also leverage ClusterGL for distributed GL Rendering of Google Earth and other OpenGL applications.

Network Sync in Irrlicht -- Ben Wright, mentored by Ben Goldstein
Google Earth is certainly a "killer app" for the Liquid Galaxy platform, but there are many other applications that could be easily enhanced, coordinating multiple instances rendering portions of a panoramic view. This project will modify the 3D Open-Source graphics engine Irrlicht, enabling many 3D applications using this platform.

Android Phone Accelerometer as Liquid Galaxy Input Device -- Reese Butler, mentored by Adam Vollrath
Currently, the most popular method of controlling Liquid Galaxy setups is through the use of a 3D Connexion Space Navigator and a touchscreen. This project aims to improve Liquid Galaxy’s accessibility by adding Android phones to the list of input devices. Since many people own Android phones already, this project would effectively eliminate the need to purchase additional peripherals in order to control a Liquid Galaxy setup, while enabling innovative ways of interacting with the system.

The GSoC 2011 coding period officially begins May 24th and wraps up in August. Follow these projects and other development on the project's mailing list.

Google's Summer of Code program makes an enormous contribution to the Open Source community and provides great (paid!) experience with Open Source development for many talented students. At End Point we are thrilled that The Liquid Galaxy Project will benefit from this great program.