The Visualization Lab

Tools Used at the Visualization Lab

Software

• IBM Visualization Data Explorer (Data Explorer or simply DX) is our main environment for scientific visualization. DX is a general-purpose software package for data visualization and analysis. It employs a data-flow driven client-server execution model and provides a graphical program editor that allows the user to create a visualization using a point and click interface. A good source of information about this package is the Data Explorer home page or the Data Explorer Repository at Cornell University.
• PV-WAVE CL is a command language based software system that integrates graphics, data analysis, image processing and programming tools to create a Visual Data Analysis environment ranging from quick prototyping to full-scale application development.
• Alias Studio is a high end application for interactively creating 3D models, rendering them for quality output, and animating them. The modeler allows users to create objects from various primitives such as cubes, spheres, extruded objects, and objects of revolution and transform them interactively.
• rayshade is a public domain program for creating ray traced images, written by Craig Kolb et al (Princeton University). It reads a multi-line ASCII file describing the scene to be rendered and produces a color image corresponding to the description. "rayshade" was designed to make it easy to create nice pictures. It was also meant to be flexible, easy to modify, and relatively fast.

Hardware

• IBM RISC System/6000 Model 390 workstation with GXT1000-002 graphics processor subsystem.
• Various additional IBM RISC System/6000 workstations and Xstations.
• SGI Onyx/Reality Engine2 workstation.
• Kodak XL7700 dye diffusion printer.
• Abekas A60 Digital Disk Video Recorder.
• Video equipment.