The ACES Visualization Lab is a 2,900 sq. ft. computing facility for performing large scale data analysis and scientific visualization. It is open and available for use to all faculty, students, and staff at the University and is located on the ground floor of the ACES building. The lab prominently features a 10' tall, 180° stereo-capable display and a similarly sized tiled, rear-projected display. These displays are driven by either Maverick, a Sun Microsystems E25K server located remotely at the J.J. Pickle Campus, or Mustang, a smaller SGI Prism locally located in the ACES basement. Additionally there are four single-user Dell workstations with large displays and high-end graphics cards available for use.
Who uses it? Currently, numerous departments on campus use the TACC Vislab from Physics to Computer Science to Astronomy to Theater and Dance. The range of projects in the lab is greatly varied, as the computing and visualization equipment can be used for almost any field and any kind of data. The scale of the immersive visualization capabilities in the lab enable one to see details in data that would go unnoticed with more conventional displays.
The lab consists of 5 computer systems, a video and audio system, a keyboard and mouse system and the controller, referred to as the Crestron switcher. All of these components are hooked into a matrix located in the basement. This enables the systems in the VisLab to be displayed on any of the monitors or large screens as necessary and controlled at different stations.
The Lab is currently composed of four parts: the Front and Rear Projection Systems, the Console, and the Workstation Perimeter. Below the lab is the machine room, housing Mustang, our primary visualization machine. This machine drives the projection systems in the lab most often. In addition, a remote visualization engine, Maverick, located at the J.J. Pickle Research Campus, is the second machine used to drive the screens.
The output for the projection systems is a set of front projectors, a set of back projectors, and a 10 speaker sound system. The Front Projection System consists of three edge-blended CRT beams on a curved 180° screen, providing a seamless, immersive view. The Rear Projection System consists of two rows of five flat panels that are backlit by LCD projectors. The back projectors also allow one to stand at the screen without blocking the display.
The front projection screens are driven by three CRT projectors. These projectors have very similar specifications to the CRTs used with workstation. In general, video images are always mirrored between the front projectors and CRTs located at the console since that is the main work area. This is done by simply feeding the same video signals to both the projectors and the corresponding CRT displays.
| Display | Arrangement | Technology | Stereo |
| Front | Half cylindrical, curved surface | 3 edge-blended CRT projectors | Yes |
| Back | 2x5 tiled panels | 10 LCD projectors | No |
The video matrix switch is a programmable 64-input/64-output video switch. It allows users to arbitrarily remap video and audio sources to displays and speakers in the building. Switching can be done via a touch panel, web based interface, or computer program. This provides for better use of shared resources, whether computers or video presentation systems.
All video, keyboard, and mice needed to run the ACES Visualization Lab are connected to a matrix switch. This is a switch board that allows users to map any output to any of the corresponding input devices. In general, this means routing a console to a workstation. This is done by operating the touch panel at the main workstation, the Console. The touch panel is an interface used to control the matrix switcher. This allows you to route any monitor, keyboard, and mouse pairs to any desired nodes that are connected to the matrix switch. As a default, Mustang's output is routed to the console monitors located in the lab.
There are several steps needed to become a new user. To request allocations for any of the equipment at TACC, you must first have a portal account. You can request a portal account by going to the portal home page and clicking on the link New User and following the online instructions to create an account. Once you have a portal account, you can request an allocation by logging in to the portal and clicking on 'Allocations' on the right hand side of the top menu bar. On the left hand navigation menu, you will see Add New Resource. Click on that link and follow the instructions. The portal will guide you through the allocations request process. To use the lab, you will need to request access to one or more of the SciVis resources (Mustang, Maverick). You will be asked to estimate the number of hours that you will be using the lab. Once submitted, TACC personnel will review the request and contact you to let you know when the status of your allocation request.
By applying for an account on the visualization lab machine, you are also applying for the right to use the visualization lab itself. You may or may not wish to do so. If you wish to use the visualization lab in addition to the visualization lab computer, you must attend a one time training session to familiarize yourself with the operation of the matrix switcher and the projectors. You can set up a training session by submitting the consulting form. You will be contacted by personnel in the visualization lab to set up a time and date for your training. The sessions last an average two hours. At this session, you will be asked to review and sign an acknowledgement of the policies and procedures for using the visualization lab. After this training, staff will be available to aid with project visualization. All users should reserve time on the system using the Visualization Reservation System.
All new users wishing to use the visualization lab must attend a one time training session to become familiar with the operation of the matrix switcher and the projectors. Users may set up a training session by submitting a request through the consulting form. You will be contacted by personnel in the visualization lab to set up a time and date for your training. The sessions last on average two hours. At this session, you will be asked to review and sign an acknowledgement of the policies and procedures for using the visualization lab. All users wishing to use the lab should reserve times by using the Visualization Reservation System.
Mustang is an SGI Prism workstation housed in the basement of ACES. It is the primary display engine for the displays in the vislab. Mustang is mapped to the front screens and the console in the lab by default. It is a shared memory machine running Intel Itanium2 processors and ATI graphics cards. For detailed information about Mustang's capabilities and resources, consult the Mustang user guide.
The remote visualization engine, Maverick, is located at the J.J. Pickle Research Center. Maverick is a Sun E25K with 128 Sparc4 processors, 512 Gigabytes of shared memory, and with access to over 13 TB of storage. The Sparc4 CPUs have a clock speed of 1.05 GHz, and are capable of issuing 2 floating point operations per clock tick. A unique feature of the system is the modular graphics subsystem, based on programmable, commodity graphics cards. For more information abou Maverick, consult the online user guide. Maverick can only display on the front screens.
Maverick utilizes shared memory architecture. This means that when analyzing large datasets, processing time is greatly reduced as the processors wait less for the data. With shared memory architecture, a single memory address space is visible to all system resources and across all nodes. This allows access to all data in the system's memory directly and extremely quickly, without the obstacles of networking bottlenecks or other hang-ups.
V2D, also known as Teraburst, is hardware that allows certain types of displays. It is basically a transmitter and receiver in the form of an embedded Linux device that transports the signal over the network (digital transcoder). The advantage of using the V2D is that allows stereo display. It consists of 3 pairs (Left, Center and Right) where each is a transmitter and receiver. V2D is the hardware currently used to display data stored on Maverick.
For more detailed information on how to use Maverick in the lab, consult the "Remote Visualization" section of the Maverick user guide.
Volente is a Dell Precision 670 Workstation located in the console. It is a dual Xeon 3.6 GHz machine with two 320 GB drives and 4 GB RAM. There are two nVidia cards running the 3 headed display: a Quadro FX 3400 and a GeForce FX 5500 card. The machine dual boots to Windows XP Pro and Linux RedHat Enterprise 3.
There are four high-end Dell workstations located in the lab, running both Windows XP and Linux. The machines are well suited to a variety of data and display-intensive visualization and post-production tasks. They are not cabled into the matrix and cannot display to the large screens in the main portion of the lab. The machines do, however, have large flat panel displays and are suitable for work where much visual real estate is desired and are also better suited for a 2-5 person audience.
Consulting is provided through two mechanisms in the ACES Visualization Lab. During the hours of 8am and 5pm M-F, users can walk into the ACES Visualization Lab and get face-to-face contact with a visualization consultant. Users can also submit a consulting ticket through the TACC User Portal and following the consulting link.
Users may reserve time in the lab through the Visualization Reservation System. The calendar will not allow you to schedule time if the slot is already taken by someone else. Once you have applied for time in the visualization lab, you will be contacted by the Visualization staff to tell you whether the requested time has been approved. If you reserve time in the visualization lab and you are unable to make the scheduled session, please notify us using the consulting form
By applying for an account on the visualization lab machine, you are also applying for the right to use the visualization lab itself. You may or may not wish to do so. If you wish to use the visualization lab in addition to the visualization lab computer, you must attend a one time training session to familiarize yourself with the operation of the matrix switcher and the projectors. You can set up a training session by submitting the consulting form. You will be contacted by personnel in the visualization lab to set up a time and date for your training. The sessions last on average two hours. At this session, you will be asked to review and sign an acknowledgement of the policies and procedures for using the visualization lab.
The systems above can be displayed in the lab using the console. The Console is a movable station with three keyboards, a mouse, a joystick, and three monitors. It also has a VCR and a DVD player. All configurations are controlled using a touch panel that allows switching on/off of any of the projectors, speakers, and keyboards. Input and output from any of the units in the Computer Room or other parts in the building can be channeled through the Console. All presentation aspects of the lab are piloted from the Console. The Console is connected via a flexible cable, and can be moved within the Visualization Lab, including behind the curved screen.
On the right hand side of the console is a crestron box. This box is the user end of the matrix downstairs which is used to select the inputs (machines) and outputs (monitors, projectors, etc). The crestron box has several windows. In order to use the part of the matrix where you select the machine to use and connect it to a display, you will need to enter a code. The code is given during a formal training of the lab. Once the code is entered, advanced controls appear on the crestron box. The LCD, CRT and Audio power modes are located on the right hand side while the RGBHV mode is on the left.