Visualization Center
Welcome to the homepage of the UFZ’s Visualization Center. The Visualization Center is part of the 
Department of Environmental Informatics, and collaborates with other working groups from all over the UFZ and external partners. Its aim is to improve the insight into complicated 3D and 4D data sets and foster communication among scientists with different specializations or among scientists and the public. This homepage gives an overview of the technology and the different initial projects. If you have any inquiries, please contact:
Overview of Projects:
The Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research is working in very diverse subject areas and so the projects at the visualization center are equally wide ranging. However, they mainly comprise 3 different project categories - visualization of scientific data (e.g. from geoscientific simulations), visualization of landscapes and visualization of urban areas. Currently the emphasis of our work is on the visualization of geoscience data.
Scientific Visualization
Geoscience data sets can be very complex and may have multiple attributes in different formats and on different scales. Imagine, for example, a visualization that contains four different kinds of data: Firstly there are the geophysical measurements that form the basis of our knowledge about the subsurface we have, secondly the resulting structural geological model derived from these data, thirdly the solid model which is the basis for any simulation and finally the resulting simulation results for, let’s say, a groundwater simulation. Clearly, the stereoscopic visualization helps us to see all these data in the spatial context, detect errors in the data set, see interrelations between the data and explain the situation to decision makers who are possibly not used to looking at such data. Examples of data sets we are currently visualizing are data from geothermics and data from the Department for Hydrogeology. Visualization research topics in this area include the efficient use of the visualization center as a visual decision support system, research in human computer interaction and user interface design and research on new visualization methods, e.g. for rendering data with uncertainty.
Landscape Visualization
Many man-made actions have an impact on the landscapes surrounding us and this should be communicated to and discussed with the public, so that people are aware of this fact. The German government, for example, aims to increase by about threefold the contribution that wind power generated energy makes to overall primary energy consumption by 2020. The current regulatory practice regarding land use means that suitable locations for new wind parks are becoming scarce and this aim to increase the number of wind parks is beginning to conflict with issues related to environmental, nature, and landscape protection. Against this background, the visualization center, together with the Department of Economics, is participating in a project for which its large scale projection-based visualization system will be used to evaluate the public’s views on different designs for potential new wind farms. Essential research has begun by establishing the workflow to start with the GIS data from a certain region and to generate a 3D landscape model that can be run in real time on the display and to enable the users to interact with and change the model. The visualization of landscapes functions independently from the specific tasks, such as the aforementioned public participation in wind park planning.
Urban Visualization
The developments and changes in urban and metropolitan regions are research topics for several of the working groups at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research. Even if there has been no cooperation so far with these departments, we are already looking into this subject and have generated some examples to show the potential of the visualization center. Topics here mainly include the generation of the models, either by hand or using procedural techniques.
Technology
As shown at the top of this page, we use a back projection-based stereoscopic visualization environment, purpose built by 
BARCO, with an approximately 6x3 meter large main screen and corresponding projections on the floor and two side wings. In order to achieve a high resolution of approximately 6400x1800 pixels, 13 SXGA+ projectors (BARCO Galaxy) are used to run this system. The image is generated frame sequentially for the left and the right eye and users wear special glasses which separate these images, so that they get a real 3D stereoscopic view. For the stereo separation we can switch between two technologies – active stereo, using shutter glasses and passive stereo, using Infitec and BARCO’s Active Infitec+ technology. We use an ART tracking system, so that viewers can turn their head and move while the image is always computed in a way that correctly maintains perspective, and they can move through the virtual landscape using a pointer.
The rendering is done using a computer cluster with 13 workstations that has been purpose built by SysGen. Each workstation is fitted with high-end NVidia QuadroFX 5500 graphics boards which are synchronised using GenLock and SwapLock. In addition to the normal network, the workstations are interconnected using Infiniband. The overall hardware setup in our laboratory is sketched below.
To run visualizations in this system specialized software is needed that runs in a master-slave mode. For our development we use OpenSG which is an open source scenegraph that provides the necessary cluster support and the commercial software VRED from PI-VR GmbH, former VREC GmbH. The VRED software is mainly focused on the automotive industry and provides high quality rendering. We have extended this software, using Qt, OpenSG and the Visualization Toolkit (www.vtk.org), to meet our needs regarding the interactive visualization of scientific data.
Current and Former Staff
Dr. Björn Zehner joined the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in March 2005 as a research scientist. He has been in charge of planning the visualization centre from scratch, and developing initial projects. Now he is doing project supervision and software development and advises on and does research into visualization and virtual reality issues, covering a wide range of different topics, from landscape visualization to visualization of geoscientific data.
Lars Bilke joined the visualization centre in November 2007 when he started to work as intern on the integration of 3D Connexion Input devices into OpenSG. He then stayed on as a student to work on his Masters thesis in Mediainformatics, supervised by Prof. Dr. Vyhnal from HTWK Leipzig and Dr. Björn Zehner, about the procedural generation of city zones with houses from the period of rapid industrial expansion in Germany (end of 19th century). Since November 2008 he has been working at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research as a technician, helping with software development and the administration of computers and display technology.
Michael Vieweg worked at the visualization centre from February 2007 to July 2008. He started as an intern to gain experience with 3D modelling using Cinema4D and VRED in order to generate a geometrical model of a small city zone of Leipzig. He then worked as a scientific assistant on data handling, GIS data processing and modelling, took part in a project on landscape visualization and helped administrating the computer cluster.
Miguel Fonseca worked with the visualization centre from March to October 2007 doing the practical phase for his studies in informatics at the Universidade Independente in Lisboa, and writing his thesis. He created an interactive visualization of a small city zone of Leipzig that can switch the visualization of the houses between renovated, unrenovated and demolished states and so aims to show different scenarios for how this part of Leipzig might change in the future.