On The Road
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| Booth visitors don 3-D glasses to view the ROVR. | Paul Muzio uses the Fakespace System's ROVR system. |
ARL MSRC participates in AIAA exhibit
By Ric Kositzke, Managing Editor
Joe Hager had never seen the picturesque, snow-capped mountains that envelop the former Wild West town of Reno, Nevada. Nor had the software engineer ever discussed the applications of Fakespace System’s ROVR 3-D scientific visualization system to a large crowd of engineers, scientists and educators.
Yet there he stood at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronauctics's (AIAA) 42nd Annual Aerospace Sciences Meeting and Exhibit telling many how users turn their hard data into scientific 3-D renderings.
Apparently, Hager is a fast study.
“The ROVR was a huge draw,” said Hager, who urged passerbys to don the unique 3-D glasses that accompany the high-tech system. “Hopefully people left our exhibit with a better understanding of our scientific visualization capabilities and insight as to what our computing environment offers to users as a whole.”
The show, held Jan. 5-8 inside the Reno Hilton, was a mix of lectures, workshops, meetings and exhibits, inspired by those who desire to share and disseminate the knowledge and research results that someday might set milestones for human flight.
With that in mind, the ARL MSRC Outreach Team, headed by Judy Bouchelle-Keithley and Brian Simmonds, worked with AMC exhibit staff to create a booth that was both aesthetically pleasing and intriguing. The booth featured two large flat-panel displays that explained how the MSRCs were created and recent user success stories, as well as an SGI Onyx2 to run the ROVR, informational posters, and a Linux NetworX Cluster, which was a scaled-down version of the cluster that was added to our HPC suite back in October 2003. In addition to the ARL MSRC materials, the exhibit featured publications from both the Aeronautical Systems Center MSRC and the Army High Performance Computing Research Center. A full-working T-700 turboshaft engine, like the ones used in Army Black Hawk helicopters, was also part of the exhibit.
On the technical side of the show, the ARL MSRC Director, Charles J. Nietubicz, worked with ARL MSRC's Tom Kendall and Mike McCraney on a paper called, “HPC Technology Trends–An ARL MSRC Perspective.” McCraney presented the paper at the meeting.