Computer Graphics World

moved to back burners in the dark years of the company's struggle to survive during bankruptcy and to start growing once again. Through the upheavals at SGI, CTO Eng Lim Goh has remained at the center of SGI, and he has con- tinued to work on the vision of making visual information accessible across platforms and across the world. Although SGI expects VUE to help sell Reality Centers and visualization hard- ware, SGI is selling VUE as a separate set of products for any visualization appli- cation. "These technologies," says Pette, "enable OpenGL to run on any platform, including those of our competitors." There are other options, including propri- etary systems built to order. Hewlett-Pack- ard offers Remote Presentation Graphics (RPG) to customers that lets them access remote data on HP machines. Mental Im- ages' Reality Server is similar to VUE in that it's agnostic about the platform. Product Lineup The VUE components include: n FusionVUE—Integrates informa- tion from various sources and platforms so it can be presented in VUEspace, SGI's presentation environment. n SoftVUE—Renders visual in- formation in software and does not require specialized graphics hardware. n PowerVUE—Renders informa- tion for large-scale applications in real time, taking advantage of CPUs and GPUs, depending on the platform. n RemoteVUE—Delivers visual in- formation via Internet Protocol to remote locations on any device. Because the information is man- aged at the data center, Remote- VUE protects sensitive data. n EventVUE—Integrates diverse data sources and organizes it ac- cording to context or geospatial relationships. It can analyze real- time events based on established parameters, and issue alerts or highlight potential threats. Although, SGI is now announcing VUE as a set of packaged modules, the company has been developing the technology for several years and mak- ing it available to customers. At this point, SGI has several customers al- ready working with VUE components in the field. Halliburton is using a VUE- based system to monitor real-time drill- ing. NASA is modeling the effects of a dirty bomb blast in urban areas to help plan evacuation. And, in the really crazy category, the McLaren race team is able to run information from a race, pinpoint areas on the car that could be better streamlined, and rebuild a car in time for the next race—overnight if necessary. But perhaps the real power that new visualization technologies like VUE bring becomes apparent as they get broader rollouts into games, entertainment, and, of course, shopping. Pette points out that the work the military is doing to train soldiers isn't that different from a computer game. In both cases, VUE can offer more access to information and richer visual detail. VUE tools could be used to build better GIS databases that can be delivered to our car while we're hunting for parking spaces. And, shopping for a car could get more interesting if one could pull up models on an iPhone and compare mod- els and specs. Listing the possible applications re- veals nothing new. We've been talking about these capabilities for a long time. But, we haven't had them yet. For SGI, the key is software, specifically open software. It's a vision the company has held constant over the years, and it comes to life in VUE. –Kathleen Maher February 2009 33 Visualization n n n n SGI's VUE software modules are platform agnostic; therefore, not only do they run on the company's Reality Centers but also on systems from competing companies.

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