Oregon State University Leverages Scalable Display Technologies to Bring Oregon’s Forests to Life with Immersive Visualization

Nestled in the heart of the Pacific Northwest, Oregon State University (OSU) is the state’s largest public research institution. Since its founding in 1868, OSU has grown into a thriving academic community with more than 36,000 students and over 272,000 alumni worldwide. With a legacy built on innovation and discovery, the university is renowned for its excellence in engineering, forestry, agriculture and marine sciences. Within OSU lies the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), a hub known for its contributions to research and education. The school champions industry-focused learning for undergraduates, while its groundbreaking online programs have placed OSU among the nation’s leaders in distance education.

One of the most visionary projects to emerge from EECS comes from the lab of Associate Professor Raffaele de Amicis. Using advanced geographic datasets and LiDAR scans, de Amicis and his team have created a digital twin of Oregon’s Elliott State Forest – a stunning, immersive recreation of one of the Pacific Northwest’s vast wilderness areas. In this virtual landscape, users become participants in the environment. They can easily manipulate time and weather, traverse rugged terrain and teleport to any point in the forest. The simulation allows users to model the effects of selective logging or full-scale clear-cutting, offering new insights into environmental impact and forest management.

Currently, the high-fidelity virtual forest encompasses a detailed rendering of 26,000 trees across a section of the Elliott State Forest. Ultimately, de Amicis aims to scale this digital twin to encompass the entire 2.8 million-tree forest and beyond. The creation of the digital forest began with detailed survey data provided by the Oregon Department of Forestry, later expanded with datasets from the Oregon State University College of Forestry. This information was processed through geographic information system (GIS) software to analyze and map environmental features in real-world coordinates. From there, game engines like Unity and Unreal were deployed to generate the forest’s striking visual fidelity, allowing for highly interactive and realistic representations.

To bring these virtual environments to life in physical spaces, de Amicis selected Scalable Display Technologies for its cutting-edge projection mapping and edge blending capabilities, ensuring a seamless, immersive display experience. “After doing some research, specifically when I came across technical documentation while working with Unreal Engine, I became curious about Scalable’s technical capabilities,” de Amicis recalled. “That was the first time I encountered their software, and it prompted me to explore it further. A key benefit of Scalable’s technology is the integration with multiple platforms, like Unreal and Unity, which is essential for our use case.”

Scalable, combined with platforms like Unreal and Unity, enhances the realism of the simulation and empowers the research team to engage with the digital forest in the same dynamic way gamers interact with virtual worlds by navigating terrain, triggering environmental changes, and modeling complex ecological scenarios in real-time.

What followed was not only a successful technical integration but also a positive and collaborative experience. “I found Scalable easy to use – it is definitely user-friendly. I was especially impressed with its technical performance, particularly in terms of color calibration and geometric calibration. Those aspects worked quite well,” de Amicis said. “What really stood out to me, though, was my interaction with Scalable’s team. The people I was in contact with were responsive and helpful, and that human connection made a big difference. It was one of the main reasons I ultimately decided to go with Scalable.”

From de Amicis’ perspective, the value of Scalable’s technology goes well beyond visuals. “I’m primarily using the product for educational and research purposes, and in that context, strong customer support and human connection were key factors in my decision,” he said. “Support for educational institutions is incredibly important. The more accessible this technology is to us, the more we can leverage it for educational purposes. Our students can become familiar with the technology, gain hands-on experience, and engage with real-world applications.”

Scalable’s software is revolutionizing the way virtual content is experienced. By leveraging Scalable’s powerful software, de Amicis’ lab is transformed from an ordinary surface into a dynamic, interactive display – enabling immersive visualizations and engaging storytelling. Scalable’s intuitive software simplifies this sophisticated setup for students, faculty and researchers through a streamlined, one-touch calibration process, which eliminates the need for complex manual adjustments and significantly reduces downtime, making it easy to maintain optimal display performance with minimal effort.

Founded in 2004, Scalable is the original inventor and patent holder of camera-based automatic warp and blend technology. The technology originated from pioneering research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) by Dr. Rajeev Surati and Dr. Tom Knight. Today, Scalable holds 12 patents covering edge blending, geometric warping, and color calibration. Today, Scalable continues to lead the industry with innovative solutions across various sectors, including higher education, virtual production, military and maritime simulation, architecture, design and the arts. Using advanced machine vision algorithms, Scalable offers a cost-effective and user-friendly platform for creating seamless, high-resolution displays of any shape or size. The software automatically calibrates image geometry, brightness, and color from multiple projectors – resulting in one continuous, unified display.