# Presentation: 083299

## Visualization Software Packages

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

## 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

- Scott Klasky (PPPL)

## 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

- Scott Klasky (PPPL)

## 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 people’s 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->2D->1D)
- Stream Lines

- Scott Klasky (PPPL)

## 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 PC’s 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!

- Scott Klasky (PPPL)

## 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

- Scott Klasky (PPPL)

## 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

- Scott Klasky (PPPL)

## 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

- Scott Klasky (PPPL)

## 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->soon).
- 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 Tang’s datasets.
- Demo

- Scott Klasky (PPPL)

## 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

- Scott Klasky (PPPL)

## 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.

- Scott Klasky (PPPL)

## 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

- Scott Klasky (PPPL)

## 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!

- Scott Klasky (PPPL)

## 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 SGI’s.

- Scott Klasky (PPPL)

## 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->OsX).
- 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.

- Scott Klasky (PPPL)

## 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.
- VTK’s 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

- Scott Klasky (PPPL)

## 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: It’s Free, and it uses SMP->thread 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 M&S this year).

- Scott Klasky (PPPL)