SGI Explorer

IRIS Explorer was originally developed by Silicon Graphics for their workstations. It is a modular visualisation environment - you create your application interactively by connecting modules together using a point-and-click interface. IRIS Explorer comes with about 150 modules (more are available) which perform tasks such as reading in data, filtering it, transforming it; creating graphical objects like line graphs, histograms, contours, surfaces, isosurfaces, volumes, vector plots, etc; and displaying them together in a window with full 3D interaction. A number of modules are built using Silicon Graphics' ImageVision library, and provide a large amount of image processing functionality.

You can create your own modules to read or translate data using a point-and-click tool called the DataScribe, or use the Module Builder - another tool bundled with the system - to transform your existing routines (in the form of C, C++ or FORTRAN source, or even as pure executables) into modules for use from within IRIS Explorer. Finally, IRIS Explorer provides the application developer with the ability to customise the look and feel of the application before handing it over to the end-user.

Recently, SGI licenced IRIS Explorer to the Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG), who are porting it to Sun, IBM RS/6000, HP and DEC platforms. The Sun and RS/6000 ports are available 10/94; the others will follow soon. Please contact the IRIS Explorer Centers for more details.