Visualization in the Geosciences with Paraview and Geowall

Numerical simulations are becoming increasingly important in the Geosciences — partly because of new sophisticated methods and tools that have been developed, but also because of the available computing power. At the Geophysics institute at the LMU Munich, the computing cluster is particularly used for simulations of the convection in the Earth’s mantle and seismic wave propagation. Since the structures in the deep interior of the Earth are neither completely understood nor can be directly seen or examined, a good visualization is essential for the understanding, and a fast path from the raw data into meaningful images is crucial. In our investigations, we found that Paraview is a good tool for doing that — especially because its flexible architecture allows to run it on the very same computing cluster where the simulation has been carried out, so also large datasets can be handled; the automated preprocessing is done with the aid of VTK scripts. As a front-end, a “Geowall” can be used (a low-cost stereo projection device consisting of a PC with a dual-head graphics card, two digital projectors with polarizing filters, and a metallic screen), which facilitates the understanding of complex structures.

@inproceedings{id1032,
  address = {Berlin},
  author = {Moder, Christoph and Bunge, Hans-Peter and Igel, Heiner and Schuberth, Bernhard},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 4th High-End Visualization Workshop},
  editor = {Benger, Werner and Heinzl, Ren\'e and Kapferer, Wolfgang and Schoor, Wolfram and Tyagi, Mayank and Venkataraman, Shalini and Weber, Gunther},
  isbn = {9783865412164},
  language = {en},
  pages = {147-155},
  publisher = {Lehmanns Media},
  title = {Visualization in the Geosciences with Paraview and Geowall},
  url = {http://vizworkshop.at/},
  year = {2007},
}

%O Conference Proceedings
%C Berlin
%A Moder, Christoph
%A Bunge, Hans-Peter
%A Igel, Heiner
%A Schuberth, Bernhard
%B Proceedings of the 4th High-End Visualization Workshop
%E Benger, Werner
%E Heinzl, René
%E Kapferer, Wolfgang
%E Schoor, Wolfram
%E Tyagi, Mayank
%E Venkataraman, Shalini
%E Weber, Gunther
%@ 9783865412164
%G en
%P 147-155
%I Lehmanns Media
%T Visualization in the Geosciences with Paraview and Geowall
%U http://vizworkshop.at/
%D 2007