Scitech in Perth, Western Australia has created a new interactive multimedia exhibit that explores a colourful and animated world of water known as “Waterlandia”.

“Waterlandia” uses a large two-by-three metre touch screen with 36 touch points, allowing multiple users to interact on the screen at any one time, while still having their own water cycle scenario to tinker with.

Eight months in the making, the exhibit is Scitech’s most ambitious multimedia project to-date and incorporates over 10,000 lines of programming code.

What really makes it stand out is the re-creation of water flow and Scitech’s in-house programmer had the challenging task of creating realistic water behaviour based on individual particle modelling research papers only six months old.

To support the Waterlandia’s extensive visual graphics, Scitech invested in four brand-new Panasonic laser projectors mounted vertically and calibrated to produce a seamless display. As the first business in the world to purchase the units, the innovative use is being written up as a case study by the manufacturer.

The large-scale exhibit demonstrates the impact of the water cycle and its role in the environment by allowing visitors to interact with the water and manipulate its direction and flow, by drawing or erasing lines. The virtual world of “Waterlandia” comes alive when water is abundant and the environment changes when water is scarce.

“Waterlandia” is rear-projected onto a physical screen which is 3.0m x 1.6m. Four state-of-the-art High Definition LED/Laser-Combined Light Source projectors mounted in portrait orientation produce an overall resolution of 4320×1920 pixels.

The ‘water’ in “Waterlandia” is generated using a position based fluids simulation on a PC with GPU assisted physics processing.

To produce the animation, graphics and simulation Scitech utilised various software platforms including C# .NET and a custom framework built on XNA 4.0, Spine Animation, CUDA 5.5 (Via Managed CUDA) and Microsoft Surface 2.0 Software Development Kit.