Vis5D

Introduction

Vis5D is a system for interactive visualization of large 5-D gridded data sets such as those produced by numerical weather models. One can make isosurfaces, contour line slices, colored slices, volume renderings, etc of data in a 3-D grid, then rotate and animate the images in real time. There's also a feature for wind trajectory tracing, a way to make text anotations for publications, support for interactive data analysis, etc.

Here's a screen shot of Vis5D:


Click here or here for more sample images.

Vis5D was written by the Visualization Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) by Bill Hibbard and and Brian Paul with the help of:

The development of Vis5D was supported by NASA and the EPA.


System Requirements

Vis5D 4.3, the most recent version, works with the following systems:

Notes: The size of your memory determines the size of data set you can visualize. You should have two bytes of memory for each point in your data set in order to have maximum interactivity. However, you can visualize larger data sets with reduced interactivity.


How to get Vis5D

Vis5D is available by anonymous ftp from iris.ssec.wisc.edu/pub/vis5d. The distribution consists of two files: If you've used Vis5D in the past you do not need the vis5d-data.tar.Z file since you should already have the files it contains.

The README file contains the complete Vis5D documentation including compilation and installation instructions (section 2).

Manual ftp operation:

% ftp iris.ssec.wisc.edu
Connected to iris.ssec.wisc.edu
Name:  anonymous
Guest login ok, type your name as password.
Password:  myname@address
ftp> cd pub/vis5d
ftp> asc
ftp> get README
ftp> bin
ftp> get vis5d-4.3.tar.Z
ftp> get vis5d-data.tar.Z
ftp> bye
Precompiled Vis5D executables (along with map and topography files) are available for the following systems:

Your Web browser will ask where to put the file and what to name it. Put it in the directory where you want to install Vis5D, and name it vis5d.tar (your browser should automatically uncompress the file). Then enter the command "tar -xvf vis5d.tar" (make sure you're in the dirctory where you want to install Vis5D). Now Vis5D is installed. You can get rid of the tar file by entering the command "rm vis5d.tar".

Installing Linux on your PC

You can run Vis5D on your PC if you install the Linux operating system. It is a freeware version of Unix and you can find everything you need to know about it at The Linux Documentation Project Home Page. Note that about 2/3 of the way down the page you'll find a list of commercial Linux products that make installation easy.

Port of Vis5D to OS/2

Check out this port of Vis5D to OS/2, done by Larry Mabrey.

If you are in Europe

Recently, users in Europe have had problems with low bandwidth to North American ftp servers. The Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum has offered to serve as a mirror site for our software. Here are links to the files available: Manual ftp operation:

% ftp ftp.dkrz.de
Connected to info.dkrz.de
Name:  anonymous
Guest login ok, type your name as password.
Password:  myname@address
ftp> cd pub/visu/ssec/vis5d-4.3
ftp> asc
ftp> get README
ftp> bin
ftp> get vis5d-4.3.tar.Z
ftp> get vis5d-data.tar.Z
ftp> bye
Your Web browser will ask where to put the file and what to name it. Put it in the directory where you want to install Vis5D, and name it vis5d.tar (your browser should automatically uncompress the file). Then enter the command "tar -xvf vis5d.tar" (make sure you're in the dirctory where you want to install Vis5D). Now Vis5D is installed. You can get rid of the tar file by entering the command "rm vis5d.tar".


Serving and Viewing Vis5D Files Via the Web

In order to make it easy for modelers to examine each other's data sets, we have defined Vis5D files as a medium for exchanging information on the World Wide Web. Links to Vis5D files can be embedded in Web pages (just as links to GIF files can be embedded in web pages), and Mosaic can automatically invoke Vis5D to view them (just as it automatically invokes xv to view GIF files).

Click here to find out how to do it.


Getting Help

Vis5D is free software and as such we do not provide real support for it. However, we will be happy to answer questions and/or help with minor problems (preferably by email).

Email can be sent to Bill Hibbard at whibbard@macc.wisc.edu and Johan Kellum at johan@ssec.wisc.edu.

U.S. Mail can be sent to:

Space Science and Engineering Center
University of Wisconsin - Madison
1225 W. Dayton St.
Madison, WI  53706
There is a Vis5D mailing list. To subscribe to it send an email message to majordomo@ssec.wisc.edu with

subscribe vis5d-list

as the first line of the message body.


Vis5D in the Virtual Reality CAVE and ImmersaDesk

Cave5D is a version of Vis5D that runs in the virtual reality CAVE and ImmersaDesk. It is freely available from Glen Wheless and Cathy Lascara of Old Dominion University and includes improvements they made that allow you to easily apply Cave5D to any Vis5D data set (i.e., any .v5d file). It is based on an early version of Cave5D that we demonstrated at the Siggraph '94 VROOM and at the Supercomputing '95 GII Testbed.

Cave5D is featured by the NCSA Alliance.


Vis5D in a Boom-Mounted Virtual Reality System

Vis5D has also been adapted to a Boom-mounted virtual reality system at NASA / GSFC by Steve Maher.


Vis5D for Streaming Datasets over Networks

SE_Vis5D is a version of Vis5D that accepts input from a network data stream rather than a file. It is available from Harvey Mudd College.


Other links

The Vis5D FAQ may answer a question you have about installing or using Vis5D.

The Vis5D API document describes the internal programming interface to Vis5D. This allows you to use Vis5D as a subsystem and is intended for programmers only.

The Vis5D scripting document describes the TCL scripting interface in Vis5D 4.3.

The UW-NMS group is using Vis5D to visualize operational forecasts.

NCAR Scientific Computing Division's Research Gallery contains lots of great visualizations produced using Vis5D (the forest fire simulation is especially hot).

McGill University has produced some great visualizations of a Hurricane Andrew Simulation using Vis5D.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has produced some great visualizations comparing model predictions with satellite images using Vis5D. YanChing Zhang (yan@vislab.epa.gov) of the EPA Vis Lab is the expert on the Vis5D TCL scripting language.

Steve Maher of NASA / GSFC has developed software for Key Frame animation in Vis5D.

We also have a home page for VisAD.

A list of Internet Domains useful for locating Vis5D users.


Last updated on 16 August 1997.