eScience @ Microsoft : Viz

Amazon Web Services support Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR6 Subset

eScience — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:11:45 GMT

Now that AWS is supporting SDSS, there is probably useful integration between the Worldwide Telescope and the SDSS datasets that can be leveraged, beyond what is currently supported - such as seeing the all the known galaxies in a 3D view – seeing the lattice structure of the universe.

Search and Browse data from the Virtual Observatory and plot data over imagery: WorldWide Telescope delivers one-click contextual access to distributed Web information and data sources and Interoperates through SAMP and other popular tools like TopCat, Aladin, SAOImage DS9 and many more.

Data derived from researchers using the AWS datasets can integrate imagery and catalog data directly into WorldWide Telescope using the WWT Developer Kit.

Professional features

Virtual Observatory Cone search/registry look up and SIMBAD search
Load and Adjust basic FITS images and AVM files
SIAP with footprint preview
Connect your Telescope to WWT
Multi-monitor cluster rendering
Visualization of large scale structure
SAMP Inter-application communication
Full dome projection

New Public Data Set: Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR6 Subset

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey, or SDSS, is now available as a Public Data Set.

Weighing in at 180 GB, the SDSS is the most ambitious astronomical survey ever undertaken. The researchers have used a 2.5 meter, 120 megapixel telescope located in Apache Point, New Mexico to capture images of over one quarter of the sky, or about 230 million celestial objects. They have also created 3-dimensional maps containing more than 930,000 galaxies and 120,000 quasars.

Amazon Web Services Blog: New Public Data Set: Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR6 Subset

Cross Posted from Dan Fay's Blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/dan_fay)

TIME - WorldWideTelescope one of 50 Best Websites 2009

eScience — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 23:29:15 GMT

TIME magazine has the WorldWide Telescope WebClient (Silverlight) on their list of 50 Best Websites for 2009. That puts WWT in with sites like Flickr, Twitter, Skype, YouTube, Amazon, and even PhotoSynth – not bad for the very small team we have on it :-)

WorldWideTelescope

Like Google Earth for the heavens, WWT aggregates terabytes of astronomical data from the world's biggest telescopes to create a single virtual scope that anyone can look through. WWT is not a model of the known universe, but rather a centralized repository for just about everything known about the universe. The idea is to democratize the science of astronomy with a single tool that can be used by students and scientists. Who knows, when everyone has access to the same data, maybe the next big discovery in astronomy will be made by an amateur? There are hundreds of terabytes of digitized sky — enough data for everyone

WorldWideTelescope - 50 Best Websites 2009 - TIME

Cross Posted from Dan Fay's Blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/dan_fay)

“Cophenhagen” – a user experience concept video

eScience — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 20:46:25 GMT

Just saw some of these great UI concept ideas by Cullen Dudas’ on istartedsomething and it’s a fun watch.

Also – some some footage that shows off some of the previous Windows launches.

Copenhagen User Experience from Copenhagen Concept on Vimeo.

Cross Posted from Dan Fay's Blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/dan_fay)

Wow - DeepZoomPix Technology Demo – Azure, Silverlight and Deep Zoom

eScience — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 08:46:50 GMT

Just tried out the DeepZoomPix Technology Demo – it’s pretty amazing – brings together Azure, Silverlight and Deep Zoom.

I tested it out with some Astronomy photos…

dfd

Cross Posted from Dan Fay's Blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/dan_fay)

WorldWide Telescope – Busy couple of weeks – NASA and SilverLight

eScience — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 23:53:06 GMT

Yesterday the joint press release went out on the collaboration and Space Act Agreement we’re been working on with NASA for sometime. We’re really excited about working with NASA to process many datasets like the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and make them available in WorldWide Telescope. Having these images available in the TOAST (tesselated octahedral adaptive subdivision transform) projection format will not only benefit WWT but any viewer supporting that format. The benefit of using TOAST as Jonathan Fay one mentioned “It creates a 360-degree wraparound view that’s either a planet surface or the infinite sphere of the sky, and lets you represent it using a 3D graphics accelerator, very rapidly and efficiently. So we can have an image pyramid the way Deep Zoom does, and TerraServer before it, but we don’t have to give up the poles.”

NASA and Microsoft to Make Universe of Data Available to the Public

There is a really good article out talking about some of the background behind Curtis Wong and Jonathan Fay’s labor of love. WorldWide Telescope Puts Wonders of Space on a PC

The other big news is that at Mix09 we put out a alpha release of the worldwide telescope web client built using SilverLight. Now all the folks running Macs can see what all the buzz was behind Scoble’s post What made me cry: Microsoft’s World Wide Telescope from last year.

Cross Posted from Dan Fay's Blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/dan_fay)

WWT at TechFest on NYTimes.com

eScience — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 19:49:24 GMT

The NYTimes.com article by Ashlee Vance, included a great picture by Stuart Isett for The New York Times showing the dome that was put together for TechFest to demonstrate the planetarium projection mode of WWT as well as the gesture interaction from Andy Wilson and Hrvoje Benko.

Microsoft Maps Course to a Jetsons-Style Future

Stuart Isett for The New York Times

Hrvoje Benko demonstrating a Microsoft projection system that lets people manipulate large video images with their hands.

Microsoft Maps Course to a Jetsons-Style Future - NYTimes.com

Cross Posted from Dan Fay's Blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/dan_fay)

Microsoft Research TechFest 2009

eScience — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 21:31:26 GMT

Today is the first day of the MSR TechFest 2009 – a showcase of MSR technologies – you can see pictures from TechFest. One of the demos I’m loosely tied to is Interactions with an Omni-Directional Projector – which utilizes WorldWide Telescope projected on a dome with gesture interaction. The neat part about it is that it brings together the great interaction (hands) work from Andy Wilson and Hrvoje Benko from the Adaptive Systems and Interaction and Jonathan Fay (no relation)

TechFest is much like a Science Fair – booths to demonstrate new algorithms, discoveries, etc. Great place to wander and dream what the magic of software can do….

TechFest 2009

TechFest is an annual event that brings researchers from Microsoft Research’s labs around the world to Redmond to share their latest work with Microsoft product teams. Attendees experience some of the freshest, most innovative technologies emerging from Microsoft’s research efforts. The event provides a forum in which product teams and researchers can discuss the novel work occurring in the labs, thereby encouraging effective technology transfer into Microsoft products.

TechFest 2009 - Microsoft Research

Cross Posted from Dan Fay's Blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/dan_fay)

The Earth, Stars, and Planets in 3D

eScience — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 22:20:10 GMT

One of the coolest new features of the WWT Solstice Borealis Beta (released at the beginning of Jan) is the ability to see the Earth, Stars, and Planets in a stereoscopic 3D effect. I’ve been using the Anaglyph mode (View | {arrow} | Stereo | Anaglyph) which uses the stylish red/cyan glasses shown below to not only look at the Stars, but you can zoom all the way out and see the lattice structure made up galaxies of the universe. Checking out the planets, like Mars, Saturn, etc is also very impressive. Going down to Earth, you can change your perspective by holding down the ctrl key and then you can fly into objects like Mount St. Helens

Mount St. Helens in normal view Mount St. Helens in stereoscopic view

Check it out if you have a pair of red/cyan glasses – they are all the rage :-)

Cross Posted from Dan Fay's Blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/dan_fay)

Science Images in Photosynth

eScience — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 23:44:24 GMT

Here are a few really good synths of scientific images in Photosynth. You can find others using Microscopes or Biology. And there is even a Dissected Cat if you have a strong stomach.

Obelia, polyps, golangia by ppberk

Micrographs of powder coating material by SynthSets

Frog Kidney by ppberk

Cross Posted from Dan Fay's Blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/dan_fay)

NodeXL for viewing and analyzing network graphs is available again (formally .NetMap)

eScience — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 08:00:35 GMT

NodeXL – the app formally know as .NetMap is available again on CodePlex. NodeXL is a Excel template and addin for viewing and analyzing network graphs. There are a whole slew of updates and bug fixes. Check it out…. Cross Posted from Dan Fay's Blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/dan_fay)

InfoMesa Project – Whiteboard for your data

eScience — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 17:57:56 GMT

One of neatest apps I’ve see lately is InfoMesa – a project by Sam Batterman – the example is InfoMesa allows any kind of data or visualization to be added to the Whiteboard.

The folks at RENCI are using it in their Social Computing Room (SCR) w/ a 360 degree desktop.

You can download the implementation and code and test it out.

Download

What is it?

InfoMesa is a project to allow scientists to do more science and more discovery in a collaborative and data-rich environment. The metaphor that we have elected to use as the underlying fabric of the InfoMesa is a Whiteboard.

InfoMesa allows any kind of data or visualization to be added to the Whiteboard. Far from static, these tools are interactive, allowing data to be absorbed from data sources like Oracle, SQL Server, Excel Spreadsheets, XML or even Cloud-based web services. InfoMesa, when complete will support imagery, video, 2D connected models, 3D models (lit in a photo realistically manner), web searches, results from web service calls, Image Tile Maps, ScatterPlots, Sticky Notes, Ink Notes, Rich Annotations and Associations.

An Example of a typical InfoMesa Whiteboard is shown here:

Welcome to the InfoMesa Project - Official Launch - Windows Live

Cross Posted from Dan Fay's Blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/dan_fay)

Virtual Earth in full view

eScience — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 23:01:25 GMT

Now this is a way to view Virtual Earth – talk about an immersive experience. I would like to see how WorldWide Telescope would look on this display…

PDC2008 ShowOff Entry: Multi-channel Virtual Earth
Multi-channel Virtual Earth
Description
This video shows a multi-channel version of the Virtual Earth control running on a custom curved screen that provides a 180 degree horizontal field of view. The screen is created using eight high-end full 1080p projectors with a professional warping and blending system. The code is a modified version of a sample project with a custom camera class to properly adjust the FOV and camera offset for each projector and some code to synchronize the camera position across the network. The system is being controlled with a wireless Xbox 360 controller.

PDC2008 ShowOff Entry: Multi-channel Virtual Earth | briankel | Channel 9

Cross Posted from Dan Fay's Blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/dan_fay)

Touchless

eScience — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 02:35:46 GMT

Touchless is a fun and very cool release available from Office Labs – all you need is a webcam and some objects to use as pointers/markers…

check it out.

Touchless

Touchless enables touch without touching by using a webcam to track color based markers. Touchless includes two parts:

Touchless Demo is an open source application that anyone with a webcam can use to experience multi-touch, no geekiness required. There are 4 fun demos: Snake - where you control a snake with a marker, Defender - up to 4 player version of a pong-like game, Map - where you can rotate, zoom, and move a map using 2 markers, and Draw - the marker is used to guess what.... draw!

Touchless SDK is an open source SDK that enables developers to create multi-touch based applications using a webcam for input, geekiness recommended.

Touchless

Cross Posted from Dan Fay's Blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/dan_fay)

New drop of .NetMap available

eScience — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 17:58:55 GMT

There’s a new release (1.0.1.52) of .NetMap available – which includes both the Excel Template and the class libraries. The big feature in this drop is the ability to do Directed or Undirected graphs. This determines whether arrows are drawn on the graph. Also take a look at the discussion on using the class libraries in other apps.

.NetMap - Home

Cross Posted from Dan Fay's Blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/dan_fay)

[Papers] Supporting Finite Element Analysis with a Relational Database Backend; There is Life beyond Files

eScience — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 21:00:53 GMT

In a discussion I had today around ways to advance a scientific problem I was reminded of Jim Gray and Gerd Heber's trilogy - Supporting Finite Element Analysis with a Relational Database Backend. The three papers are really a good resource for understanding how databases can be used in scientific challenges.

Part I: There is Life beyond Files

We show how to use a Relational Database Management System in support of Finite Element Analysis. We believe it is a new way of thinking about data management in well-understood applications to prepare them for two major challenges, - size and integration (globalization). Neither extreme size nor integration (with other applications over the Web) was a design concern 30 years ago when the paradigm for FEA implementation first was formed. On the other hand, database technology has come a long way since its inception and it is past time to highlight its usefulness to the field of scientific computing and computer based engineering. This series aims to widen the list of applications for database designers and for FEA users and application developers to reap some of the benefits of database development.

Part II: Database Design and Access

This is Part II of a three articles on using databases for Finite Element Analysis (FEA). It discusses (1) db design, (2) data loading, (3) typical use cases during grid building, (4) typical use cases during simulation (get and put), (5) typical use cases during analysis (also done in Part III) and some performance measures of these cases. It argues that using a database is simpler to implement than custom data schemas, has better performance because it can use data parallelism, and better supports FEA modularity and tool evolution because database schema evolution, data independence, and self-defining data.

Part III: OpenDX – Where the Numbers Come Alive

In this report, we show a unified visualization and data analysis approach to Finite Element Analysis. The example application is visualization of 3D models of (metallic) polycrystals. Our solution combines a mature, general purpose, rapid-prototyping visualization tool, OpenDX (formerly known as IBM Visualization Data Explorer) [1,2], with an enterprise-class relational database management system, Microsoft SQL Server [3]. Substantial progress can be made with established off-the-shelf technologies. This approach certainly has its limits and we point out some of the shortcomings which require more innovative products for visualization, data-, and knowledge management. But, overall, the approach is a substantial improvement in the FEA lifecycle, and probably will work for other data-intensive sciences wanting to visualize and analyze massive simulation or measurement datasets.

Cross Posted from Dan Fay's Blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/dan_fay)