Theresa-Marie Rhyne

Computer games' influence on scientific and information visualization

The breakneck pace of consumer graphics development has yielded an unexpected dividend: using commodity graphics boards in high-end scientific applications. Historically, the visualization community has been a driving force in high-end computer graphics innovation, fostering technologies that have gradually filtered down to the consumer market. In recent years, however, the financial growth of the computer games market has made it the driving force in the development of consumer graphics applications and hardware. While scientific and information visualization focus on knowledge, computer games focus on play. Thus, the type of play a game depicts strongly affects the graphics it requires. Popular game environments span many classifications, including fast-paced first-person shooting games, massively multiplayer roleplaying games, computer translations of classic board games like chess and backgammon, and construction simulations that let players create a city or even an entire world. Regardless of their differences, each game type facilitates the development of visual thinking concepts. Thinking visually in three dimensions, benefits the sense of wonder and user interaction connected with the application of scientific and information visualization technologies.

Internetworked graphics and the Web

Although the networking and computer graphics fields are considered to be distinct disciplines, they must begin to converge in order to support collaborative exploration and information visualization on the Internet and the World Wide Web. Telecommunication breakthroughs remove bottlenecks and provide new opportunities for interactive 3D graphics across globally interconnected, dissimilar networks. Multicast backbone tools, developed in the networking arena, provide desktop videoconferencing tools for sharing information visualization and virtual reality explorations. The Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML), developed in the computer graphics arena, supports the 3D display and fly-through of networked computing resources on the Internet. The computer graphics community considers VRML to be an interactive tool for exploring content on the Web. The telecommunications community calls it an application on the networking infrastructure. The authors define the concept of internetworked graphics to describe the future merger and dependencies of computer graphics applications and the telecommunications networking infrastructure.

Scientific visualization and technology transfer: an EPA case study

The transfer of high-performance computing and scientific visualization technologies from specific research efforts to major policy-setting and regulatory activities is an important component of the US Environmental Protection Agencys High-Performance Computing and Communications Program. This requires providing EPA regional and program offices, as well as state environmental protection agencies, with desktop scientific visualization capabilities. With these visual display tools, environmental scientists, policy analysts and decision-makers will be able to collaborate via the Internet to examine and control complex ecosystem problems that span multiple state boundaries and international borders. >

Cutting-Edge Research in Visualization

Today, visualization is more than just a collection of plots, graphs, and computer-generated 3D renderings-it has become a formidable intellectual powerhouse that is delivering solutions to the problem of managing the data deluge. The Web extra at http://youtu.be/iCE6Uzj9fC4 is an audio recording in which Theresa-Marie Rhyne and Min Chen discuss how visualization has become a formidable intellectual powerhouse that is delivering solutions to the problem of managing the data deluge.

Exploiting networks for visualization and collaboration: no network roadblocks?

and collaboration using high speed networking, multimedia and interactive computer graphics techniques. Efforts among researchers, programmers, and artists (i.e. Renissance Teams) to use the new National Information Infrastructure (NII) as well as international telecommunication systems are featured. Software tools which support collaborative visualization across heterogenous platforms for research, education and commerical purposes are highlighted. Collaborative computing involves facilitating information discovery and scientific visualization activities between researchers located at various remote sites. It includes the use of visualization and information retrieval in a high speed networked environment. Computing resources become transparently available to researchers via the networked environment and this results in a metacomputer. Some collaborations involve interdisciplinary teams focused on solving a single problem while others encompass the sharing of different methodologies and resulting solutions to similar problems. Positive aspects associated with these high speed networked collaborations center on real time visualization and information discovery among geographically remote research or Renaissance Teams. There are also negative impacts or roadblocks associated with metacomputing. Network transmission difficulties and differences in desktop workstation architectures can cloud the actual visualization two collaborating researchers are simultaneously viewing and steering. Setting up and learning to use the metacomputing infrastructure can be all consuming and thus refocus the basic education or scientific discovery process. Various perspectives on these concerns are debated by the panelists.

Two stepping information technology with visualization: a viewpoint from the U.S. EPA Scientific Visualization Center

Interactive visualization techniques facilitate the examination of unknown data sets. At the United States Environmental Protection Agencys (U.S. EPA) Scientific Visualization Center, we are exploring the combination of 3D visual displays with emerging information technologies. The following discussion highlights prototype efforts in three arenas: (1) Integrating Visualization into Data Mining Techniques; (2) Exploring Policy Analysis Visualization and (3) Combining Object-Relational Databases, Visualization and Web Technologies. The three prototypes are still in embryotic form. We anticipate it will take three to five years for actualization of these concepts and precise implementation details will change over time.The U.S. EPA is currently designing and implementing a new high profile Office of Environmental Information that will advocate the use and management of information as a strategic resource to enhance public health and environmental protection. New information technologies will be applied to facilitate the collection and dissemination of environmental data. We are hopeful that interactive visualization tools will be successfully used across the entire range of users, computing platforms and World Wide Web (Web) technologies that support the information life cycle.

Integrating interactive graphics techniques with future technologies (panel session)

This panel examines the need to integrate computer graphics techniques with other methodologies and technologies such as mobile and wireless personal assistants, intelligent agents, cartography, human perception, voice recognition, interactive television, cooperative computing, and high speed networking. The need to develop new interfaces and displays which reflect the social changes associated with the way people will interact with integrated computer systems and the information highway is addressed.

Visualization requirements in the atmospheric and environmental sciences (five case study reports)

Reports from five research centers involved with atmospheric and environmental visualization issues are presented in this case study. Visualization with heterogeneous computer architectures is highlighted in the US EPA Scientific Visualization Center discussion. The NASA Marshall Space Flight Center effort to develop the multidimensional analysis of sensor systems (MASS) environment is presented. Florida State Universitys building of a new scientific visualization package, Sci An, is reported. This is followed by a discussion of the design and implementation of VIS-AD, an experimental laboratory for developing scientific algorithms, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The visualization of global atmospheric data at IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center is highlighted.<<ETX>>