1. Polly Baker Division Director: Data, Mining, and Visualization
November 2, 2000

2. Outline Hardware environments Software Production VR environments
Follow-on environments for display and user interaction
Software
VisBench

3. Production VR Environments
CAVE, ImmersaDesk
Head-tracked stereo viewing
Powered by SGI Onyx

4. Scalable Display Wall
Package commodity PC’s, graphics accelerators, projectors, software  an affordable, multimegapixel display

5. User Interaction Prototypes
Strategies for unencumbered user interaction (speech, touch, wireless handhelds, gesture tracking…

6. Visualization Generator
NCSA VisBench
Visualization Generator
Component
Data
Server
HPC resources
Client
applications
User requests
Graphics
Component-based, distributed system for visualization
Run services on HPC resources
Communicate with remotely located clients, including CAVEs, desktops, browsers
VisBench is a component-based system. Services for visualization activities are encapsulated and can run on a variety of machines. The simplest set of services includes a component to deal with making data available and a component to deal with converting that data to a visual form.
Goals are to enable use of HPC-site resources by remote users, to support vis display on multiple types of platforms.
Users access services through lightweight clients that could be constructed for various kinds of platforms. Any number of clients could be constructed, customized for different users or user groups.

7. VisBench Component Services
Data
Server
Database
1..n
Vis
Generator
Terrain
Generator
High-quality Renderer
Analysis
Module
HPC resources
User requests
Graphics
From vis tool to problem-solving environment, through addition of richer set of services
Client
applications
As a component based system, we can think of a rich set of services that can be included in a visualization software workbench. This takes us in the direction of a more complete data analysis environment, with support for data management, for visualization of various types, for analysis. Taking this approach also lets us augment scientific visualization (vis of simulation output) with vis of data from other sources, and to embed vis within a larger set of other data analysis activities

8. VisBench Technologies
Data
Server
Database
1..n
Vis
Generator
Terrain
Generator
Analysis
Module
High-quality Renderer
HDF5
VTK + Python
Local algorithms
MATLAB
RenderMan
User requests
Graphics
CORBA for distributed object support
XML to capture session state
Java Swing interface
Client
applications
To mention the technologies we are using in the current VisBench, we use VTK with a Python front-end as the vis generator. We have a terrain generator built from our own algorithms. We use Renderman as a high-quality renderer. We are currently working on integrating MATLAB into the collection of services.
For each of the services, we wrap them in CORBA to provide distributed access. And we use XML as a formal way to capture current system state.

9. VisBench for CFD 3D air flow around a louvered fin
Courtesy Heiland, Tafti

10. VisBench for CFD
Hurricane Opal

11. VisBench for Weather Modeling
Visualization generator
Terrain/GIS
Server(s)
Experiment to combine simulation output with terrain and GIS data services
Client application
Rob Stein, Kelvin Droegemeier

12. Linked with multi-scale image viewer…

13. VisBench Development Approach
Work with particular application teams to assemble full-function vis environment with custom scripts, user interface
Tafti CFD problem
Chemical Engineering portal group
In FY01: Also provide simple Web-based capabilities applicable to many users.