Run CavePainting from the kiosk

This page will tell you how to start Cavepainting through the system at the Granoff in Studio 4. This system consists of the following elements:

• 8x8x8 cube environment
• a set of tracking devices
• interaction wands
• stereoscopic glasses
• computers to run the system

The computer directly adjacent to the cube is a touch-sensitive Windows 8 machine known as "the kiosk". This is the only computer you'll need to use to access the Cave--all others are for supporting systems. The main interface for the Cave is a web browser that consists of a set of tabbed panels and buttons. Each tab contains a set of programs to run in the Cave. The "Video Config" and "Cavepainting" tabs are the only ones we'll use--the others are available for other courses that use the system.

There are two wands for authoring content and interacting with your scene. The black wand is for use in your dominant hand and a white wand for your other hand. These are both hard to replace, so please be careful not to drop or otherwise damage them. Only the bottom trigger button on each wand is used in Cavepainting. The black wand has a power button on the right side of the top panel, which should light up when pressed. The white wand has a switch on bottom of the back panel, which should also light up when turned on. The black wand will power down automatically; however, the white wand should be turned off manually (to avoid making an enemy of the next person in the Cave :)

The stereoscopic glasses allow the rendered scene to be selectively shown to each eye and synchronize with the refresh rate of the projectors. One special pair of glasses has a fixture of sticks and ball, which is used for tracking the position of the users head. Other glasses will work, but there may be strange effects in the viewed scene from perspective distortions. The closer others are to the head-tracked glasses, the more accurate the view will be. Each pair of glasses has a button for turning it on and off that is located to the right of the right lens.

If you have any trouble, check out Troubleshoot CavePainting for what to try next.

Turn On the Cave and Start Up Cavepainting

1. Bring up the kiosk interface: The kiosk interface is a webpage, so we run it in Firefox. If you already see the interface (a white screen with a bunch of tabs across the top and buttons under the tabs), just move on to the next step. If not...
   • If Firefox is running, hit the "home" button just to the left of the address bar, or type Alt+Home.
   • If Firefox is not running, double-click on the Firefox icon on the desktop.
2. Turn on the Cave: hit the "Video Config" tab and then the "CAVE On" button.
3. Start your program: hit the "CS137 2008" tab (or whatever group your button falls under) and then your button.
4. Look at the Windows machine: after a couple seconds, you should see a little black window with some text pop up on the Windows machine to the right of the Cave.
   • If you don't see a black window pop up, make sure that the program grexecd is running on the Windows machine and that there are no error messages popped up. If you don't see a window named "grexecd", double-click on the "grexecd" icon on the desktop. If there are error windows, just exit out of them.
5. After the black window, a big grey window should appear that takes up the whole screen.
6. Look at the Cave: A few seconds later, the Cave should turn grey and the Cavepainting menu should appear.

Use Cavepainting

1. Turn on the glasses: Pick up the glasses that have a wire leading to them. Squeeze the right temple and then let go; the lenses should change from dark green to grey.
2. Grab the controllers and start painting!

Shut Down Cavepainting and Turn Off the Cave

1. Save your work often, but especially before you shut down.
2. Shut down Cavepainting: hit the Esc key on the Windows machine to the right of the Cave. An error box will pop up; just hit "Ok".
3. Shut down your program: hit the skull-and-crossbones button next to the name of your program on the kiosk page.
4. Shut down the Cave: hit the "Video Config" tab on the kiosk and then the "CAVE Off" button.