Associate Professor Raffaele de Amicis at Oregon State University's School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science built an interactive digital twin of 26,000 trees in Oregon's Elliott State Forest using Scalable Display Technologies — enabling students and researchers to traverse virtual terrain, model clear-cutting impacts, and manipulate time and weather in real time across a seamlessly calibrated multi-projector display.
Oregon State University has created an interactive digital twin of one of the Pacific Northwest's most significant wilderness areas — a high-fidelity virtual replica of Oregon's Elliott State Forest, rendered in real time across a seamlessly calibrated multi-projector display powered by Scalable Display Technologies.
Founded in 1868, Oregon State University is home to more than 36,000 students and over 272,000 alumni worldwide. Within OSU, the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science is known for its contributions to cutting-edge research — and this project represents one of its most ambitious applications of immersive visualization technology.
The project is the work of Associate Professor Raffaele de Amicis and his research team at OSU's School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Using detailed survey data from the Oregon Department of Forestry — supplemented by datasets from the OSU College of Forestry — and processed through geographic information system (GIS) software, the team built a digital twin of a section of Oregon's Elliott State Forest encompassing 26,000 individual trees, each modeled using LiDAR scan data.
The virtual forest is not a passive visualization. Users become active participants in the environment — they can traverse rugged terrain, teleport to any point in the forest, and manipulate time and weather in real time. The simulation also allows users to model the ecological and visual impact of selective logging or full-scale clear-cutting, offering researchers and students new tools for understanding environmental change at scale.
The forest was rendered using game engines Unity and Unreal Engine, chosen for their real-time rendering capabilities and the dynamic interaction they enable with virtual environments. The ultimate ambition of the project is to scale the digital twin from 26,000 trees to encompass the entire Elliott State Forest — all 2.8 million trees — and eventually beyond.
For the display infrastructure, de Amicis selected Scalable Display Manager to handle the warp, blend, and calibration of the multi-projector environment — transforming a physical lab surface into a seamless, immersive display capable of supporting the scale and visual fidelity the project demanded.
The discovery of Scalable's technology came directly from technical documentation encountered while working in Unreal Engine — a natural entry point for a research team already embedded in real-time game engine workflows.
"After doing some research, specifically when I came across technical documentation while working with Unreal Engine, I became curious about Scalable's technical capabilities," said de Amicis. "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."
The platform compatibility de Amicis describes is central to what makes Scalable viable for a research environment like OSU's. Academic visualization labs rarely standardize on a single content pipeline — researchers across departments bring different tools and workflows. A calibration system that works transparently across Unreal, Unity, and other platforms removes a significant integration barrier.
The integration delivered on multiple fronts — technical performance, ease of use, and the quality of the relationship with Scalable's team.
"I found Scalable easy to use," de Amicis said. "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."
For a research environment where graduate students and faculty — not dedicated AV technicians — operate the display day to day, ease of use is as important as technical accuracy. Scalable's one-touch calibration process eliminates the need for complex manual adjustments, maintaining optimal display performance with minimal effort and significantly reducing downtime between research sessions.
But for de Amicis, the technical performance was ultimately secondary to a more human consideration.
"What really stood out to me 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."
De Amicis sees the role of this installation as extending well beyond a single research project. The immersive display environment becomes a shared resource that raises the technological literacy of everyone who uses it.
"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."
By combining Scalable's projection calibration with the real-time power of Unreal and Unity, the OSU lab is transformed from an ordinary surface into a dynamic, interactive research environment — one where students can engage with complex ecological datasets the same way gamers navigate virtual worlds: traversing terrain, triggering environmental changes, and modeling scenarios in real time.
The Elliott State Forest digital twin is an early demonstration of what that infrastructure can support — and a model for how immersive visualization technology can become a foundational tool for environmental research and education at scale.
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