The Army High Performance Computing Research
Center (AHPCRC) has been developing a set of tools to work with large time
dependent 2D and 3D data sets. In the Graphics and Visualization Lab (GVL)
we are using these tools along side standard packages, such as SGI Explorer
and the Utah Raster Toolkit, to render 3D volumes and create digital
movies. A couple of the more general purpose programs have been bundled
into a package called "GVLware". The most interesting program is probably
Bob, an interactive volume renderer for the SGI. Some Bob features: Motif
interface, SGI GL rendering. Renders 64 cubed data set in 0.1 to 1.0
seconds on a VGX. Alpha Compositing and Maximum Value rendering in
perspective (only Maximum Value rendering on Personal Iris). Data must be a
"Brick of Bytes" on a regularly spaced grid. Animation, subvolumes,
subsampling, stereo. Raz streams raster images from disk to an SGI screen
enabling movies larger than memory to be played. Icol is a color map editor
that works with Bob and Raz. Source and pre-built binaries for IRIX 4.0.5
are included.