Visualization Software Packages

1
Visualization Software Packages

• Scott A. Klasky
• PPPL
• September 25, 2000

2
Outline

• VDE2000, VDE2001
• What is visualization?
• Who cares?
• Criteria to judge a visualization package.
• Visualization Packages
• Amira
• AVS
• AVS/Express
• IDL
• IRIS Explorer
• OpenDX
• PV3
• SciRun
• VisAD
• VTK
• Conclusions
• Demo

3
VDE2000, VDE2001

• VDE2000 April 27-28 2000
• Held at PPPL with 152 people in attendance
• http//w3.pppl.gov/vde2000
• Goal was to provide audience with knowledge of
  the popular Visualization Development
  Environments.
• The winners Amira and OpenDX
• VDE2001 April 26 27 2001 LBNL/NERSC
• Session 1
  Session 2
• 9-2 Software vendor overview 9-11 What's
  new/changes vendors
• 11-2
  University Vis. Tools
• 2-6 User talks 2-4 Panel 1
  Defining Scientific
• 
  Visualization Benchmarks
• 4-6 Panel 2
  Extensions to Vis.
• 
  packages for distributed
• 
  memory environments
• Session 1
  Session 2
• 9-12 User talks 9-12 Hardware
  vendors
• 9-10 Poster Session
• 1-5 Showdown

4
What is visualization?

• Data Visualization is the process of representing
  data as a graphics display on a screen.
• Visualization gives you
• Insight into your data by allowing you to
  interact with your data.
• Enables you to analyze and obtain new
  information.
• Enables you to present your data with others.
• Visualization tells the story of your data.
• Good stories capture peoples attention, and make
  them ask questions to gain new insights.
• Interaction with the data.
• Visualization systems should allow us to interact
  with the data easily.
• Rotations/Translations/Zooms, Time animations,
  etc. must be FAST!
• Visualization Techniques
• Isosurfaces
• Volume Rendering
• Slicing/Clipping
• Extraction (3D-gt2D-gt1D)
• Stream Lines

5
Who cares!

• Back in the stone-age, researchers had X-terms
  which were incapable of scientific visualization.
• In the future (days to come) we will have PCs
  with fast graphics cards!
• The world will seem like a different and better
  place
• New CAD (Dell machines) has changed the way the
  engineers are working.
• 3D vis. Packages will be available on your
  desktop!
• Your needs can be incorporated in what we do here
  for visualization!

6
Criteria to judge a visualization package

• Quality of the Output
• Accuracy of the output
• Ex There are many isosurface routines which miss
  triangles,
• Aesthetic quality of the output
• Speed of Common Visualization Routines.
• Isosurfaces, Streamlines
• Contour Plots, Volume Rendering
• Speed for rotations/translations/zooms.
• Ease of Use
• Need statistical sample of users
• How many lines of code does it take to create
  everyday visualizations.
• Number of Visualization and numerical modules
  available.
• Cost

7
AMIRA

• PPPL is in the process of obtaining the license
  (3000/node locked license) (AmiraDev), 1K for
  Amira 2.1 (non extendible).
• At VDE2000, they showed the most impress 3d
  graphics.
• Data Flow environment, with less tools than DX,
  Express, but the tools it includes are more
  powerfull.
• 120 modules to visualize, analyze and process
  data.
• TCL command language for scripting or vis.
  Network editing.
• Extendible with the AmiraDev edition (will be
  available in a another week).
• Extendible means that we can create new modules
  in the system.
• Will be primary used at PPPL for end
  visualizations (not as much for everyday
  visualization, unless it proves to be extremely
  powerful.
• Stereo Support

8
AVS

• Not recommend by Muse/AVS if you have
  AVS/Express.
• Similar to IRIS Explorer and IBM DX.
• All 3 products came on the market about the same
  time (AVS was the first).
• Does not have custom UI modules.
• More difficult to use c.f. Express.
• Does not support vector postscript output.
• Not supported at PPPL
• Stereo support
• Demo

9
AVS/Express

• AVS/Express is a multi-platform, component-based
  software environment building applications with
  interactive visualization and graphics features
• We have 6 licenses (5 vis. editions), 1
  developers edition).
• Solaris 2.7 (for Express 5.x). Solaris 2.6 (for
  express 4.2), Dec Unix, Linux (wait for Express
  5.5-gtsoon).
• 5 licenses for 5K (Vis. Edition), 5K for 1
  developers license.
• Stereo graphics support
• Seems to be the most powerful visualization
  package here at PPPL.
• 2x faster than DX for Xianzhu Tangs datasets.
• Demo

10
IDL

• Great imaging software.
• Complex method of Visualization
  Non-pipeline-dataflow program.
• Rendering Quality is not as good as other
  products.
• Very difficult to program for visualizaton
  examples VDE2000data, VDE2000data2
• Not considered a Vis. Product by Vis. Experts
• Demo

11
IRIS Explorer

• Best Quote from VDE2000, explorer used to be
  everybody's favorite when DX was not free and SGI
  IRIS Explorer was, now we are in trouble
• Better than AVS, but still uses the same
  architecture. Memory is copied between modules.
• Has a collaborative interface.
• Stereo support
• Link to NAG math routines.

12
OpenDX

• Similar to AVS
• Released to the open public May 18, 1999.
• Is well tested, widely used.
• SMP-thread based
• Support is continuing for this product from the
  mailing lists.
• Will be a PPPL supported Vis. Package.
• Very good data model
• Can run separate modules on separate computers.
• Does not support vector postscript output.
• DDX!!!!!!!!
• Demo

13
PV3

• More of a university product by Bob Haimes (MIT).
• Built on top of PVM, and made to run on parallel
  computers.
• It co-processes the visualization of data
  generated on a parallel computer.
• Data generated from large scale scientific
  simulations can inflict huge burden on those
  tasked in assisting the scientist with
  understanding the results.
• Data from one simulation can occupy terabytes of
  data. ? Compress the data so it can be
  visualized.
• PV3 does not perform traditional scientific
  visualization on the data-set after it has been
  generated.
• It deals with the volume of data concurrently
  with the solver.
• PV3 works for parallel fluid simulations.
• It contains all of the extraction tools used for
  these simulations including
• geometric cuts
• iso-surfaces
• Streamlines
• transient particle traces
• These abstracts are stored on disk, and
  transferred to the vis. Machine.
• Not easy to set up!

14
SciRun

• Chris Johnson (Utah) is the creator of this code
• Is trying to create this is a commercial product.
• Is geared for medical researchers.
• Scientific Programming environment
• Provides for the construction, debugging and
  steering of large scale computer simulations
• Extendible.
• Visual Programming
• Mainly used for Steering, where the simulation
  is built with tools in Scirun.
• Runs on the Origin 2000, and other SGIs.

15
VisAD

• Created by Bill Hibbard (Wisconsin).
• Mainly used for weather applications.
• Pure Java (Java2)
• Uses Java3d and Java2d
• Fully collaborative.
• Fully platform independent (even runs on Macs.
  Sort of-gtOsX).
• Supports computational steering.
• Users must program in Java (or now Python) to get
  their vis.
• Not for serious 3D visualization, but great for
  2d vis., and some 3d vis
• Has a nice Visualization SpreadSheet program that
  lets you get nice visualizations without
  programming.

16
VTK (Kitware)

• OpenSource
• Used for 2d Imaging, 3d graphics and
  visualization.
• Distinguishing feature is the integration of
  functionality, support of supercomputing and
  activie community support.
• Designed as a toolkit (NOT A SYSTEM).
• It is meant to be embedded into an application in
  combination with other tools.
• VTKs core is in C
• Wrapped with TCL/TK, Java, Python.
• Contains the most advanced visualization
  routines, although the other products are already
  incorporating these in their products.
• Contains streaming support, which allows VTK to
  handle large (Terabytes) data-sets.
• PPPL (with Stanley Dunn) worked on Parallel VTK
  with Kitware and Los Alamos.
• Results were poor, and we viewed this as
  difficult to use.
• To use, we must have the VTK manual by our side
  to know the interface of modules.
• Used mainly by vis. Experts.
• Demo

17
Conclusions

• PPPL supports the following vis. Packages.
• IDL Bill Davis et. Al.
• AVS/Express
• Easy to add modules
• Easy to program
• fast!
• AVS? but users should work with Express, since we
  will not continue our license for this product,
  since Express can use AVS networks.
• OpenDX? DDX Its Free, and it uses SMP-gtthread
  based, and it will eventually run on parallel
  clusters.
• VTK? If there parallel implementation gets better
  (a complete rewrite of their system), and if they
  start to build a visual front-end, then we will
  look into this product again.
• Amira???? If it can produce sexy pictures easily,
  then we should pay attention to this product.
  Coming soon??? If congress allows us (no money in
  MS this year).