Interdisciplinary Techniques, Toolkits and Models for Scientific Visualization

Abstract

Scientific visualization is concerned with the processing and display of large amounts of data in such a way as to facilitate assimilation of the information in an efficient and effective manner. Many disciplines and application have common requirements. This paper summarises current work in this area in the UK and the range of tools and techniques currently available.

A Scientific Visualization Workshop in the UK in 1991 examined the areas of framework models, visualization techniques, data facilities, human-computer interface aspects, applications, and products. Studies were also done in the area of enabling technologies — hardware, software, toolkits, database systems, and generic data formats. This work has been published as ‘Scientific Visualization — Techniques and Applications’, Springer-Verlag, 1992. This paper summarises the key results from this work.

An inter-disciplinary Scientific Visualization Group was formed at the University of Leeds in October 1990 to facilitate and coordinate campus-wide developments in area of tools and methodologies for visualization. We summarise the current work and objectives of the group in interdisciplinary application areas, and also current studies in methodologies for visualization via networks. Experiments are being set in place to study the partitioning of the visualization pipeline across different facilities (e.g. parallel processor, supercomputer, graphics workstation) and investigate interactive response times and network bandwidth requirements. Optimum configurations should enable local users to utilize high-powered facilities via network access. Desk top visualization is part of the required user toolset for the 1990’s.