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From: knutm@ifi.uio.no (Knut M|rken)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics.visualization
Subject: Re: Data Visualizer
Message-ID: <1990Dec12.100945.9069@ifi.uio.no>
Date: 12 Dec 90 10:09:45 GMT
Sender: knutm@ifi.uio.no (Knut M|rken)
Reply-To: knutm@ifi.uio.no (Knut M|rken)
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Organization: Dept. of Informatics, University in Oslo, Norway
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I recently sent out an equiry to this newsgroup for opinions on the Data Visualizer
from WaveFront, especially comparisons with AVS and aPe. I received two replies
which are included in full below.

Thanks to John and Wes for the information.

Knut Morken
Institutt for informatikk
University of Oslo
Norway
email: knutm@ifi.uio.no




Date: Mon, 26 Nov 90 09:42:16 PST
From: wes@ux5.lbl.gov (wesley bethel)
To: knutm@ifi.uio.no
Subject: Re: Data Visualizer
Newsgroups: comp.graphics.visualization
In-Reply-To: <1990Nov15.121939.1852@ifi.uio.no>
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley
Cc: 

In article <1990Nov15.121939.1852@ifi.uio.no> you write:
>
>Has anybody tried the new product from WaveFront for scientific visualization
>called Data Visualizer?
>
>What's it like?
>
>How does it compare with AVS and aPe?
>


i spent some time investigating this question while at siggraph this
year.

we have/use AVS a lot and were looking around at its competition.
we had several criteria to evaluate options:

1. can user-written modules be inserted into Product X?  for
	wavefront's stuff, the answer is no.  this catagorically
	eliminated this package from further consideration.
2. does Product X support the visual programming paradigm? again,
	the answer is no.

There were a couple of other things that wavefront's product didn't
do as well, but i don't remember them.  The Data Visualizer made
nifty pictures, but in its present state would be unusable by
scientists here.

We're sticking with AVS.

(By the way, I looked at ape as well, and didn't like it.  Although
it met nearly all of the criteria, there were other problems.  I
cornered a developer of ape and asked him to make some pictures for
me, something which did two isosurface calculations, for example.
He fiddled with ape for about 1.5 hours and was unable to get a
picture.  Needless to say, if the developer couldn't make it work,
there was no way I was going to recommend it for use here at the
lab.)

wes



Date: Fri, 16 Nov 90 11:35:59 CST
From: presley <elvis@Athena.ERC.MsState.Edu>
To: knutm@ifi.uio.no (Knut Moerken)
In-Reply-To: knutm@ifi.uio.no's message of 15 Nov 90 12:19:39 GMT
Subject: Data Visualizer

Before you get excited about purchasing it....
     When I saw it at SIGGRAPH '90, it was strictly pre-release
software.  It was nice, but unfinished.  I can't remember enough to
compare it to those general visualization packages (WaveFront had
specifically asked me to compare it to certain CFD visualization
packages which I use regularly).

Appearing again:
-John West-                        elvis@athena.erc.msstate.edu
Engineering Research Center for Computational Field Simulation
Mississippi State University ***** National Science Foundation
P.O. Drawer EE  {Simrall Bldg, Rm 431}  (601) 325-8234 (voice)
Mississippi State, MS 39762             (601) 325-2298   (fax)
.........the opinions presented here are those of the King..........