Visualization Support

Overview

CSAR offers its users visualization services which are accessed and charged for in the same way as all CSAR application support. There are several types of support that users can apply for in addition to those that are included with the service:

• Training and reports
• User consultation and advice
• Production of images or animations for a user.
• Visualization projects

Training and Reports

Visualization training is available for CSAR users from Manchester Computing. On occasions seminars and training events relevant to CSAR users will be held in collaboration with MRCCS. In particular the UKHEC project ran through MRCCS. The UKHEC looked at best practise for high performance computing and many reports, seminars and training events were held. Reports are still available from the UKHEC web site.

• Scientific Applications of Visualization, Virtual Reality and High Performance Visualization Computers with the subsiduary report Scientific Examples of Virtual Reality and Visualization Applications, technical report looking at the use of visualization and VR technologies within hpc, from UKHEC web site.
• Trends in Volume Visualization of Large Data Sets, technical report comparing differnt methods of volume visualization, from UKHEC web site.
• Scientific Application of OpenGL Vizserver within High Performance Computing, technical report looking at the use of Vizserver for remote high performance visualization, from UKHEC web site.
• VIPAR: A Case Study for UKHEC, technical report looking at one method of parallelising modules in a modular visualization environment, in this case AVS/Express, from UKHEC web site.
• Visualizing Large Parallel Finite Element Simulations, technical report looking at the application of visualization, from UKHEC web site.
• Visualization training materials presented at the 2003 summerschool on Parallel Finite Element Simulations.

User Consultation and Advice

Users are welcome to ask questions about the visualization of their data. This is often important to users near the beginning/end of a project or when they need images for a paper or report.

Consultations often come out of problems users have with the soft ware CSAR supports for visualization, AVS/Express or from a discussion started elsewhere e.g., on a training course or project meeting. There is currently no mentoring scheme for CSAR users but we are interested into looking into offering mentoring for visualization. If this is something you think you would benefit from please feel free to contact us. See visualization examples.

Production of Images or Animations for a User

Sometimes a user may require practical help producing images from their computation. There are several reasons why this may happen:

• At the end of a project a high resolution code is run and the data produced is too big to be visualized in the way it was previously.
• The user wants ideas about how best to show the important features in their data.
• The user may have no experience of animation production.

These are relatively small projects. Often the user has explored their visualization problems first by making CSAR user queries or attending a training course. If the user can still not produce the right images it may be possible for us to use our specialist graphics hardware to get us to produce the images for them.

Sometimes it may be that the user wishes to have a consultation in an environment where they can interact with their data using virtual reality technology. There is a specialist immersive virtual environment that can be used for this purpose.

These types of work are normally charged for using CSAR support tokens. See visualization examples.

Visualization Projects

In some cases when performing support work it may become clear that there are opportunities well beyond the scope of the planned work. This could result in the development of a longer term project, such as a student project at Manchester, or one funded externally, through the research councils for example. See visualization examples.