Mail-list archive

From taylorr at cs.unc.edu Mon Dec 5 14:08:32 2005
From: taylorr at cs.unc.edu (Russell M. Taylor II)
Date: Mon Dec 5 14:08:37 2005
Subject: [Vis2006_contest] Test message to begin the list.
Message-ID: <6.1.1.1.0.20051205140815.03789a00@imap1.cs.unc.edu>

---
Russell M. Taylor II, Ph.D. taylorr@cs.unc.edu
CB #3175, Sitterson Hall www.cs.unc.edu/~taylorr
University of North Carolina, Voice: (919) 962-1701
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3175 FAX: (919) 962-1799

From taylorr at cs.unc.edu Wed Jan 11 11:44:24 2006
From: taylorr at cs.unc.edu (Russell M. Taylor II)
Date: Wed Jan 11 11:49:33 2006
Subject: [Vis2006_contest] Vis 2006 design contest web page online
Message-ID: <6.1.1.1.0.20060111113032.0380eb60@imap1.cs.unc.edu>

A huge "thank you" to everyone for helping get the 2006 IEEE Visualization
Design Contest ready for announcement now, in time for it to be selected as
a course project by those who are teaching visualization courses this
spring. You submitted ideas that got included, provided data, provided
prizes, or provided beta-testing for the process.

Please help spread the word!

I think that early dissemination of the contest will be key to getting the
word out so that all interested people have time to submit this year.

The main page can be found at
http://www.cs.unc.edu/~taylorr/vis06_contest_web_page/. The rules and
questions and judging are all available now. Example data-loaders and
displayers are available now, so that people can get started right
away. This site currently includes a sample time-slice of the data
set. The full data set is being staged at SDSC as we speak and will be
linked in as soon as it becomes available (I expect by the end of
January). The exact submission deadline is still TBD, sometime prior to
the early-registration deadline.

Note: The beta-test sites are encouraged to submit, you're not included in
the organizers for purposes of determining who is
ineligible. Unfortunately for me, the students in MY vis course can't submit.

---
Russell M. Taylor II, Ph.D. taylorr@cs.unc.edu
CB #3175, Sitterson Hall www.cs.unc.edu/~taylorr
University of North Carolina, Voice: (919) 962-1701
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3175 FAX: (919) 962-1799

From taylorr at cs.unc.edu Mon Jan 23 21:45:23 2006
From: taylorr at cs.unc.edu (Russell M. Taylor II)
Date: Mon Jan 23 21:45:30 2006
Subject: [Vis2006_contest] All data sets now online
Message-ID: <6.1.1.1.0.20060123214229.01c80910@imap1.cs.unc.edu>

SDSC is hosting the full simulation data set from their FTP site. The link
on the contest download page now points to the place where they can be
downloaded. This page is at
http://www.cs.unc.edu/~taylorr/vis06_contest_web_page/download.html.

When I tried to download, it went between 2 and 6 Mbits/second, which would
make a total download time of 1-3 days, so start early and maybe grab a few
timestamps to start with. I'm working with SDSC to find out where the
bottleneck is between here and there.

Happy downloading!
Russell

---
Russell M. Taylor II, Ph.D. taylorr@cs.unc.edu
CB #3175, Sitterson Hall www.cs.unc.edu/~taylorr
University of North Carolina, Voice: (919) 962-1701
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3175 FAX: (919) 962-1799

From heiland at indiana.edu Tue Jan 24 04:38:59 2006
From: heiland at indiana.edu (Randy Heiland)
Date: Tue Jan 24 04:39:16 2006
Subject: [Vis2006_contest] x slice image request
Message-ID: <26EA98D4-F9BD-4AB6-9B44-6E6705F07D5A@indiana.edu>

On the data set download page: http://www.cs.unc.edu/~taylorr/
vis06_contest_web_page/download.html ,
referring to the vtk_read_and_display_x.tcl script to display an x-
slice of the wave data, I wonder if a screen shot image of the
expected result could be posted as well? It would make for a good
initial sanity check. I ask, in part, because I'm a little confused
that the script reads in the .bin file instead of the .vtk.

thanks, Randy
From taylorr at cs.unc.edu Wed Jan 25 20:19:50 2006
From: taylorr at cs.unc.edu (Russell M. Taylor II)
Date: Wed Jan 25 20:20:10 2006
Subject: [Vis2006_contest] x slice image request
In-Reply-To: <26EA98D4-F9BD-4AB6-9B44-6E6705F07D5A@indiana.edu>
References: <26EA98D4-F9BD-4AB6-9B44-6E6705F07D5A@indiana.edu>
Message-ID: <6.1.1.1.0.20060125201627.04141e70@imap1.cs.unc.edu>

Good idea. I've put example images (screenshots of the viewer) in the Data
Description page and pointed to that page in the Downloads page.

I have the display program read directly from the raw data as an example of
how to put together a complete VTK pipeline that goes from the raw data to
a display. The VTK files can be opened directly in ParaView or VolView,
and there is an example ParaView image on the Data Description page as well
for a particular set of isovalues and color map.

By the way, SDSC is compressing the data as I type. The first few time
slices compress a huge amount, the later ones not so much. Start
downloading early, because it looks like it will take a couple of days to
download all of the files at the available bandwidth.

Russell

At 04:38 AM 1/24/2006, Randy Heiland wrote:
>On the data set download page: http://www.cs.unc.edu/~taylorr/
>vis06_contest_web_page/download.html ,
...snip...
>Vis2006_contest mailing list
>Vis2006_contest@cs.unc.edu
>https://fafnir.cs.unc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vis2006_contest

---
Russell M. Taylor II, Ph.D. taylorr@cs.unc.edu
CB #3175, Sitterson Hall www.cs.unc.edu/~taylorr
University of North Carolina, Voice: (919) 962-1701
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3175 FAX: (919) 962-1799

From taylorr at cs.unc.edu Thu Feb 9 17:16:43 2006
From: taylorr at cs.unc.edu (Russell M. Taylor II)
Date: Thu Feb 9 17:32:37 2006
Subject: [Vis2006_contest] Mirror site set up for downloading the volume
data sets
Message-ID: <6.1.1.1.0.20060209171304.01e13ec0@imap1.cs.unc.edu>

We've set up a mirror site for the volumetric data sets at UNC. They can
be found at the following link: ftp://viscontest.cs.unc.edu/. If there are
only a few people hitting the site at any one time, it should be faster to
download from the mirror because we don't have a specific limit set on the
speed. On the other hand, it is a single old slow machine doing the
transfer so it will be easy to bog it down compared to the SDSC machines.

Russell

---
Russell M. Taylor II, Ph.D. taylorr@cs.unc.edu
CB #3175, Sitterson Hall www.cs.unc.edu/~taylorr
University of North Carolina, Voice: (919) 962-1701
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3175 FAX: (919) 962-1799

From schneidj at in.tum.de Tue Feb 21 07:21:25 2006
From: schneidj at in.tum.de (Jens Schneider)
Date: Tue Feb 21 10:11:03 2006
Subject: [Vis2006_contest] General Question about participation
Message-ID: <1BB12C418236AA49BE246F094CB53C0B126CDA@i15-ws-02.domain-i15.local>

Hello everyone,

I just saw on the contest page that submission should be made in
physical form, including CDs / DVDs. I was wondering if there is any
possibility to make the process somewhat more fair to applicants from
oversea that have a mail delivery time of about 10 days. If our group
should decide to attend the contest we could offer to host a CD / DVD
image on our ftp. Also we could send a checksum of the image to the
commitee by due-date in order to ensure that the data is not altered
after the deadline anymore.

Thanks in advance, best regards

- Jens

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From taylorr at cs.unc.edu Tue Feb 21 10:19:16 2006
From: taylorr at cs.unc.edu (Russell M. Taylor II)
Date: Tue Feb 21 10:19:32 2006
Subject: [Vis2006_contest] General Question about participation
In-Reply-To: <1BB12C418236AA49BE246F094CB53C0B126CDA@i15-ws-02.domain-i1
5.local>
References: <1BB12C418236AA49BE246F094CB53C0B126CDA@i15-ws-02.domain-i15.local>
Message-ID: <6.1.1.1.0.20060221101443.037c5ec0@imap1.cs.unc.edu>

Jens,
Good question! It turns out that I made the POSTMARK DATE be the
deadline, not the arrival date. Fred Brooks turned me on to this idea,
which saves a ton of shipping costs because everyone can drop it into
standard mail (please don't use media mail -- it can take weeks and the
contest may be over by the time it arrives).
This was intended to also help make things fair for groups from
different locations. So long as it is postmarked airmail by that date,
you're in. I built time in the schedule for the packages to take 10 days
to arrive from wherever. Thus, some can be reviewed while others are still
in transit (its not like we can review them all on the say day anyhow).
I went with physical rather than electronic transmission because
I've been burned one too many times when trying to submit by having some
server or link get bogged down right near the submission deadline. Also,
we'd need to make physical media to send to the scientists anyway for files
this large.

Russell

At 07:21 AM 2/21/2006, Jens Schneider wrote:
>Content-class: urn:content-classes:message
>Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
> boundary="----_=_NextPart_001_01C636E1.55B21254"
...snip...
>Vis2006_contest mailing list
>Vis2006_contest@cs.unc.edu
>https://fafnir.cs.unc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vis2006_contest

---
Russell M. Taylor II, Ph.D. taylorr@cs.unc.edu
CB #3175, Sitterson Hall www.cs.unc.edu/~taylorr
University of North Carolina, Voice: (919) 962-1701
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3175 FAX: (919) 962-1799
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From taylorr at cs.unc.edu Fri May 5 16:04:18 2006
From: taylorr at cs.unc.edu (Russell M. Taylor II)
Date: Fri May 5 16:04:52 2006
Subject: [Vis2006_contest] Error correction on voxel sizes in data set
Message-ID: <6.1.1.1.0.20060505160100.0461a630@imap1.cs.unc.edu>

The data sets are decimated by a factor of 4 on each spatial axis and 100
on the temporal axis, but the description of the voxel size given in the
data set description and in the data translation scripts did not take this
into account.

These have been corrected on the web site and in the example scripts. The
200x200x200 voxel size from the original data become 800x800x800 in the
data we have posted, and the 0.011-second time resolution becomes 1.1
seconds between frames.

This becomes important when trying to align the voxels with the road data
or other map data.

Thank you for MSU for pointing out this discrepancy!

The web page has now been updated to reflect the correct sizes, and the
scripts have been edited to take this into account.

Russell

---
Russell M. Taylor II, Ph.D. taylorr@cs.unc.edu
CB #3175, Sitterson Hall www.cs.unc.edu/~taylorr
University of North Carolina, Voice: (919) 962-1701
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3175 FAX: (919) 962-1799

From taylorr at cs.unc.edu Tue Jul 11 09:19:50 2006
From: taylorr at cs.unc.edu (Russell M. Taylor II)
Date: Tue Jul 11 09:19:52 2006
Subject: [Vis2006_contest] Final submission instructions ready!
Message-ID: <6.1.1.1.0.20060711091610.01c50a68@imap1.cs.unc.edu>

Here are the final submission instructions, which have also been updated on
the web page. We're looking forward to your submissions!

So that we can prepare enough judges for the contest, please forward email
to taylorr@cs.unc.edu if you think that you are going to submit. The
deadline is to be postmarked by August 11.

Submissions will consist of a 2-page PDF document describing the solution
(how the design addresses the scientific questions, which software systems
and algorithms were used), along with four DVDs (or four sets of CDs) with
accompanying information including a video demonstration. The discs should
include:
* The 2-page PDF document
* Up to five color images of up to 3200x2400 resolution showing the
visualization answering the questions.
* At most one Mpeg AVI or Quicktime video file of up to 1024x786
resolution and up to 15 minute duration showing the visualization in
action. This does not have to be recorded in real time.
* Optional (preferred): Source code for generating the pictures and
video. This will not be run by the reviewers, but will be archived with the
contest so that researchers can use on this data in the future.

---
Russell M. Taylor II, Ph.D. taylorr@cs.unc.edu
CB #3175, Sitterson Hall www.cs.unc.edu/~taylorr
University of North Carolina, Voice: (919) 962-1701
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3175 FAX: (919) 962-1799
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From maechlin at usc.edu Tue Jul 11 13:35:12 2006
From: maechlin at usc.edu (Philip Maechling)
Date: Tue Jul 11 13:35:34 2006
Subject: [Vis2006_contest] Final submission instructions ready!
In-Reply-To: <6.1.1.1.0.20060711091610.01c50a68@imap1.cs.unc.edu>
Message-ID: <001201c6a510$5d2196e0$4bcd7d80@Hope>

Russell,

One of the largest annual conferences for geoscientists is the American
Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall meeting every year in December in San
Francisco. This year, there is a poster session related to the type of
visualizations being done in this contest. If there is a way to let
interested parties know about this AGU session, we might get some of the
people in this contest interested in presenting their work at AGU. Here's
the information on the AGU Session. Let me know if you have thoughts on how
to let the visualization community know about this AGU session.

Thanks,

Phil Maechling

----

Please consider contributing an abstract and submitting a poster to a Fall
AGU session called:

IN11: Visualization of Four Dimensional Geophysical Fields

We anticipate a very inter-disciplinary session (many scientific fields) all
with an emphasis on visualization of time varying volumes of data. The
project description is below. You can submit an abstract through the Fall
AGU meeting web site at:

http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm06/

Fall AGU this year will be held: 11-15 December 2006, Monday-Friday in San
Francisco.

Description of Session: We propose a cross-disciplinary poster session
highlighting the visualization of four-dimensional geophysical fields. This
includes geodynamo, mantle convection, ocean and atmospheric circulation,
seismic wave fields, ionosphere and magnetosphere, space weather, and
others. We seek an emphasis on what scientific knowledge can be brought
forth by imaginative use of new visualization techniques, as well as
identification of approaches that can be ported from one discipline to
another. In addition, we ask authors to describe what non-visual data and
metadata are required to understand and interpret the visualizations, and
how this information is provided to the viewer. Authors are also requested
to specify what logistical and IT support they would require at the poster
session in order to display their work. Special attention will be paid to
innovative contributions from both graduate and undergraduate students.

_____

From: vis2006_contest-bounces@cs.unc.edu
[mailto:vis2006_contest-bounces@cs.unc.edu] On Behalf Of Russell M. Taylor
II
Sent: 07/11/2006 6:20 AM
To: vis2006_contest@cs.unc.edu
Subject: [Vis2006_contest] Final submission instructions ready!

Here are the final submission instructions, which have also been updated on
the web page. We're looking forward to your submissions!

So that we can prepare enough judges for the contest, please forward email
to taylorr@cs.unc.edu if you think that you are going to submit. The
deadline is to be postmarked by August 11.

* The 2-page PDF document
* Up to five color images of up to 3200x2400 resolution showing the
visualization answering the questions.
* At most one Mpeg AVI or Quicktime video file of up to 1024x786
resolution and up to 15 minute duration showing the visualization in action.
This does not have to be recorded in real time.
* Optional (preferred): Source code for generating the pictures and
video. This will not be run by the reviewers, but will be archived with the
contest so that researchers can use on this data in the future.

---
Russell M. Taylor II, Ph.D. taylorr@cs.unc.edu
CB #3175, Sitterson Hall www.cs.unc.edu/~taylorr
University of North Carolina, Voice: (919) 962-1701
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3175 FAX: (919) 962-1799

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From kallen19918 at earthlink.net Wed Aug 2 14:15:27 2006
From: kallen19918 at earthlink.net (Ken Allen)
Date: Wed Aug 2 14:10:24 2006
Subject: [Vis2006_contest] Evaluation Systems
Message-ID: <44D0EBBF.8020603@earthlink.net>

What operating systems will the contest entries be evaluated on? I
developed my entry in ruby-vtk which, in my experience, will not compile
on windows. It can sometimes be problematic to compile on linux but I've
built a binary package for Arch linux and I could try to build one for
whatever distro you have available.

Ken Allen
From tjk at cse.msstate.edu Fri Aug 4 12:55:43 2006
From: tjk at cse.msstate.edu (T.J. Jankun-Kelly)
Date: Fri Aug 4 12:55:56 2006
Subject: [Vis2006_contest] Evaluation Systems
In-Reply-To: <44D0EBBF.8020603@earthlink.net>
References: <44D0EBBF.8020603@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <B7304A0F-984A-4BAD-BE48-F1236304A2DC@cse.msstate.edu>

On Aug 2, 2006, at 13:15, Ken Allen wrote:

> What operating systems will the contest entries be evaluated on? I
> developed my entry in ruby-vtk which, in my experience ...
...snip...
>... linux but I've built a binary package for Arch linux and I could
> try to build one for whatever distro you have available.

Apologies in the delay in answering; I have been on travel.

The source code will not actually be run, as stated on the contest
web page. The PDF document, images, and video will be the main
judging materials. You can find the relevant info here:
http://www.cs.unc.edu/%7Etaylorr/vis06_contest_web_page/
http://www.cs.unc.edu/%7Etaylorr/vis06_contest_web_page/tasks.html

One week to go. Good luck!

TJK

--
T.J. Jankun-Kelly
Assistant Professor (Information and Scientific Visualization)
Computer Science and Engineering, Mississippi State University
http://www.cse.msstate.edu/~tjk/

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From taylorr at cs.unc.edu Wed Aug 9 10:41:20 2006
From: taylorr at cs.unc.edu (Russell M. Taylor II)
Date: Wed Aug 9 10:41:22 2006
Subject: [Vis2006_contest] Two more days to the deadline!
Message-ID: <6.1.1.1.0.20060809103743.01ec9ec0@imap1.cs.unc.edu>

The deadline for the 2006 IEEE Visualization Design Contest is
coming fast.
Time to be packing all of your cool demo videos and write-ups onto
CDs or DVDs and getting ready to put them in the mail. Remember, they just
have to be postmarked by Friday, August 11th -- no need to pay second-day
air charges to get them here. (Do send airmail from overseas.)
We're looking forward to receiving your submission!

Russell