Computer Graphics World

Building a visualization center is only one step on the way to accessing infor- mation and understanding it. The chal- lenge is to get visual and related infor- mation into a format that is useful, and it may well be that just one pretty picture doesn't tell the story. Bob Pette, vice president of SGI's vi- sualization group, helps customers build visualization centers, and he's been do- ing it for 20 years. During that time, the issues have changed. In the early days of advanced visualization, just getting 3D graphics to the display was the main challenge, and SGI developed key tech- nology to enable that end, including cus- tomized pipelines and the first graphics processing units (GPUs). Today, says Pette, "graphics are no longer an issue." Instead, people are overwhelmed by huge amounts of information. For instance, a design project includes much more information than a CAD model. It may also include engineering and analysis information, technical draw- ings, and supply-chain information; or a site considered for oil and gas explora- tion will have geospatial data, satellite data, pipeline modeling information, and environmental data. In both cases, the information only makes sense if it is pre- sented in a meaningful way. For some time, the stumbling block for high-end visualization centers has not been technical, it's been contextual. Visualization centers are not being in- creasingly used because it takes time to prepare data for presentation, and oftentimes customized software has to be developed for the application. Ironi- cally, the whole point of visualization is to be able to make a decision quickly. The most valuable information is the information you can get to and use to make a decision as soon as possible. SGI contends it has been working on this problem for several years and from several angles. The company builds Reality Centers for clients and supplies components for other systems. At the end of October 2008, the company introduced its VUE (Visual User Expe- rience) software, which makes it easier to combine information from a variety of sources and deliver it to anyone on any platform. With the introduction of VUE, SGI is returning to software develop- ment, one of its core competencies, A lot of this work will be done at the desktop. Designers will put together quick demos of a proposed product with lighting, reflections, and beautiful surfaces, and they'll share them for approval. ey can be dis- tributed on the Web or hosted in real time. ere are numerous products popping up to do just this. BunkSpeed burst on the scene last year with fast raytracing to create beauti- ful raytraced images complete with high-dy- namic range environments and reflections. At SIGGRAPH 2008, the company was fighting off a raft of competitors, including ArtVPS, StudioGPU, and Eon Reality. One competitive issue will be scalability. Like Mechdyne's Brum, Autodesk's Heer- mann says applications are going to have to accommodate increasing resolutions and clusters. RTT, Mental Images, and Autodesk are also taking advantage of the GPU. And wherever people are looking at visualizations and trying to make decisions, they're going to want more. e goal is to be able to put the same qual- ity image on the desktop that one currently goes down the hall, across the city, or to Lou- isiana, or maybe over to France, to see. n Kathleen Maher is a contributing editor to CGW, a senior analyst at Jon Peddie Research, a Tiburon, CA- based consultancy specializing in graphics and multime- dia, and editor in chief of JPR's "TechWatch." She can be reached at Kathleen@jonpeddie.com. Mental Images' RealityServer enables users to upload models, information, drawings, and photos associated with a project; remote users can access that information at any time. The software scales to accommodate high-resolution raytraced images. February 2009 32 n n n n Visualization SGI is trying to offer customers a better "view" of their large image sets by providing the data in a format that is useful and easy to understand through its new VUE technology. SGI Returns to Software

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