The application visualization system: a computational environment for scientific visualization (original) (raw)

Visualization in Scientific Computing-A Synopsis

IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 2000

McCormick and Thomas A. DeFanti, brought together researchers from academia, industry, and government. Computer graphics and computer vision experts analyzed emerging technologies, and federal agency representatives presented their needs and interests. Scientists representing physics, mathematics, chemistry, and medical imaging showed examples of their computer-generated imagery using film, videotape, and slides. A presentation on Japanese visualization research, a tutorial on state-of-the-art computer graphics animation research, and an overview of commercially available hardware and software rounded out the agenda.

SuperGlue: a programming environment for scientific visualization

Proceedings Visualization '92

Visualization environments have two audiences: scientists and programmers. W e suggest that many existing platforms overemphasize ease-of-use and do not adequately address issues of extensibility. We have built a visualization testbed, called SuperGlue, which is particularly suited for the rapid development of new visualization methods. A n interpreter supports rapid development of new code and an extensive class hierarchy encourages code reuse. B y explicitly designing for ease of programming, we have produced a visualization system which is powerful, easy t o use, and rapidly improving. This report describes the motivation of the work, the architecture of the system, and our plans for further development.

An advanced environment for scientific visualization using cooperative processing for animation

2004

This paper describes the IBM AIX 4-D Scientific Data Visualizer/6000, an advanced tool for the visualization of three-dimensional numerical simulations, where a distributed environment has been used to separate conceptually the numerical simulation from the visualization process. An efficient communication interface let the two processes communicate and exchange data and allows each process to be run on the proper machine. High performance computing devices are used for the numerical simulations and advanced visualizing workstations display the results as they flow through the network. The visualization environment includes i) an interactive tool for the visualization of three-dimensional data, ii) a general purpose communication tool to interface a simulation program to the visualizer and iii) an easy-to-use video server for the production of video animations from numerical simulations. Some application areas where the visualizer has been utilized are briefly indicated.

A visualization model for supercomputing environments

IEEE Parallel & Distributed Technology: Systems & Applications, 1993

Sandia 's visualization en vir0 n men t integrates a supercomputer, large storage facilities, and a visualization server to let scientists analyze large, complex problems and view pseudo-h ighper forma nce, interactive graphics on desktop displays. 16 andia National Laboratories has major research and development responsibilities for nuclear weapons, arms control, energy, environment, and other areas of national importance. Sandia's analysts use computational mechanics to solve problems in fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, hydrodynamics, solid mechanics, and structural dynamics. T h e engineers and scientists typically define a problem on a local server, simulate it on a central supercomputer, and visualize it on a local server or a central supercomputer, depending on the problem's size (see the sidebar on the next page). Previously, the only practical option for visualizing many such problems involved batch-oriented postprocessing on a supercomputer, since the size of individual data fields-such as a scalar field for temperature at each grid point for one instant in time-and of the entire results file-1040 scalar values at each grid point for all time steps-made them unwieldy to download. Now, the lab's users demand more. They want to monitor, interact with, and eventually steer the analysis of their data sets, and to see 3D images of even complex problems at their desks within 10 seconds. But although CPU speeds, internal memory and disk sizes, and other computing resources have matured in the past few years, 3D visualization remains quite painstaking. Sandia responded to its users by forming the Applied Visualization Group to create and implement a new scientific visualization environment. T h e environment was required to service 150 scientists and engineers, support 2 0 simultaneous visualization users, efficiently visualize large databases (with results files ofup to 100 Gbytes), allow desktop visu-iI

EnVision: A Web-Based Tool for Scientific Visualization

2009 9th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid, 2009

Scientific visualization is the process of transforming raw numeric data into a visual form, and is a key element of computational science. While many tools exist, they are unnecessarily difficult to use. This complexity increases time to insight and inhibits casual inquiry. The complexity derives from the need to support arbitrarily formatted data and many visualization algorithms. EnVision addresses both sources of complexity. Its design is predicated on two key insights. First, though the number of data file formats is unbounded, the structure of any one can be described using a small number of parameters. Second, the set of visualization algorithms applicable to a given type of data is small, and the subset used within a specific scientific discipline is smaller. EnVision utilizes domain-specific knowledge and user-directed semi-automation to dramatically simplify data importation and visualization algorithm selection. Its web-based interface facilitates access to remote hardware resources and provides a collaborative visualization environment.

KVS: A simple and effective framework for scientific visualization

Journal of Advanced Simulation in Science and Engineering, 2015

In this paper, we propose a visualization development framework that is a C++ class library for easily and efficiently rendering three-dimensional datasets, such as numerical simulation results, medical image datasets, and measurement datasets. Our framework provides a modular programming environment that supports the construction and execution of a visualization pipeline and allows the user to readily implement custom visualization algorithms using our simple module-based execution model. In addition, we also provide a simple implementation of a visualization environment that can handle multiple volumes and semi-transparent polygons in a single scene, which we call a fused visualization environment. Although many visualization software packages have been proposed thus far, such an environment has not previously been supported because of the visibility ordering problem. To confirm the effectiveness of our proposed visualization framework, we demonstrate several visualization applications implemented using this framework.

Steering and visualization: Enabling technologies for computational science

Future Generation Computer Systems, 2010

Computational steering is an investigative paradigm whereby the parameters of a running program can be altered according to what is seen in the currently visualized results of the simulation. For certain problems, interactive computation brings specific benefits: parameter sweeps can be completed more efficiently by quickly identifying combinations of input values that yield nonsensical results; 'what-if' studies may elucidate a number of related hypotheses without computing all of them from scratch; even simply tracking the development of a computation on-line may allow its early termination (with consequent resource savings) if it turns out its set-up was flawed for some reason. Having first come to prominence in the 1990s, the take-up of steering has accelerated in recent years: high performance computer (HPC) facilites have become more widely available, usage of the Grid is increasing, and visualization is experiencing take-up beyond the walls of the pioneering graphics laboratories that first nurtured it. All these factors combine to expand the range and difficulty of the scientific problems that can be tackled by steering. However, this benefit comes at the cost of increasing hardware and software complexity which itself may defeat further progress. This paper discusses these issues and, in the light of some users' recent experiences, charts the challenges that still face us.