Personnel
Sci Vis Team Gives Visual 'Insight' to HPC Users
By Ric Kositzke
Akin to a powerful Hollywood script that has yet to be made into a movie, the numerical data researchers elicit from ARL's high performance computers lacks in one important area: the visual component.
The visual component in this case, the fascinating 3-D renderings and high-end animations created by the Scientific Visualization (Sci Vis) Team, helps researchers get a better insight into their data.
When Sci Vis was formally created in the ARL in 1991, the group was tasked to help scientists understand and interpret the meaning of hundreds of thousands of pieces of information in a visual form.
The Sci Vis Team here at ARL is comprised of Raytheon members Mark Bolstad, Joe Hager, Jim Nelson, Susan Neczyporuk, Jose Renteria and Carl Rossmark, and the government members Jerry Clarke, Rick Angelini, Kelly Kirk, Eric Mark and John Vines.
The Sci Vis Team itself is tasked to develop new techniques for exploiting high-performance computing technology; promote the use of scientific visualization within DoD; make visualization technology available to DoD researchers and prepare video presentations in support of DoD projects.
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| The ARL MSRC Scientific Visualization Team. |
Said Bolstad, team lead for Scientific Visualization, "I enjoy the great technology: big computers and big data sets."
The technology Bolstad is referring to include high-end SGI workstations, including Indigo2 High/Max Impacts, Onyx2 Infinite Reality Engines and Indigo O2 multimedia machines. The Sci Vis facility includes a fully functional video production/multimedia facility built around a robust AVID non-linear digital editing system. Also, an Immersadesk display is used as an alternative method of displaying scientific data in an immersive, stereoscopic environment.
While working with researchers within ARL and other DoD facilities, the Sci Vis Team has accomplished works in computational fluid dynamics, penetration mechanics, battlefield troop movement, artificial terrain generation and explosive effects simulations. The laboratory provides a workspace for 10 research scientists and include many high-end graphics workstations.
According to Bolstad, the role Sci Vis plays at ARL is very exciting and something new comes up every day.
"It sort of reminds me of a story my mother used to tell me of a friend of hers that wanted to be an actress," said Bolstad. "A Hollywood studio would call the woman and say, 'We need somebody who can ride a horse, so can you ride a horse?'
'Yeah, sure,' my mother's friend would say, 'I'll be there tomorrow morning.' The wannabe actress would then turnaround and call her mother and say, 'Teach me to ride a horse between today and tomorrow.'"
The Sci Vis Team isn't planning on learning any horseback riding anytime soon, but if some type of "experimental" software writing is required, chances are they'll be ready to learn.