| Q&A |
 Eye-Sys,
Chris
King, IDV Inc.
May 2008 |
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"
The Eye-Sys development team has a great deal of
experience in squeezing the most of out a system's graphics
capabilities."
<DoD
Global Supply Chain Analysis
This project was done with the U.S. Dept of Defense.
The “Cereal Problem” represents a common
type of data analysis in the intelligence field. In
this demonstration, the assembly and consumption of
breakfast cereal acts as an unclassified analogy for
real-world supply and demand scenarios. The system demonstrates
Eye-Sys's ability to render a high volume of data being
fed from a live, external simulation. The simulation
can be controlled from within Eye-Sys using a two-way
interface, allowing the user to play interactive "what-if"
scneraios. |
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| Q1 |
Can
you tell us about the origins of the Eye-Sys project? Who does
the team consist of? |
| A1 |
Eye-Sys
was partially funded through a contract with the U.S. Navy’s
Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. It was developed
in response to the SBIR topic titled “Enhanced Visualization
of Modeling and Simulation Processes.” The founders of
IDV, Michael Sechrest and myself, had a strong background in
real-time visualization from work in the 1990's using Silicon
Graphics systems at the University of South Carolina, so this
particular topic was a perfect match for the core competency
of the company.
The Eye-Sys development
team consists largely of the same personnel that work on SpeedTree
at IDV. |
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| Q2 |
What
typical market is Eye-Sys aimed at? Can you give us a few examples
of projects carried out using your technology? |
| A2 |
Eye-Sys
as a general, data-driven, real-time visualization environment.
Its general design means it can solve a wide variety of problems.
Contrary to the trend among visualization companies, IDV does
not offer different products for different markets. It's similar
to PowerPoint® in how it is positioned. Just as there
is no "PowerPoint/Automotive" or "PowerPoint/Medical,"
there is no "Eye-Sys/Engineering" or "Eys-Sys/Financial."
There is one tool that's general enough to solve a wide range
of visualization challenges.
Eye-Sys is also unique in that it's the first real-time visualization
application to successfully combine elements from both data
visualization (visual exploration of abstract data; e.g. exploring
years of stock market data) and visual simulation (visual
representation of a physical system; e.g. a flight simulator).
One example of this combination in the field of electrical
engineering would be combining a realistic 3D rendering of
a 3-phase electric motor with a representation of the various
currents, voltages, and e-fields generated during its operation.
Eye-Sys is also capable of receiving this data from a live
external simulation (e.g. Matlab/Simulink®) and affecting
the simulation from within Eye-Sys via a virtual control panel.
MIT
BioInstrumentation Experiment
In this example, Eye-Sys was used to visualize work conducted
by MIT's BioInstrumentation Lab. The data was taken from
an experiment designed to study the human vestibulo-ocular
relfex (the eye movement responsible for stabilizing images
on the retina during eye movement). The data was imported
using Eye-Sys text file object and feeds the different
elements of the visualization system. The visualization
allowed the researchers to view the data in a completely
different way.
More screenshots
and a video of the project are available here.
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| Q3 |
The
Eye-Sys User Interface is a combination of building blocks and
property editors. How long does it take to get fully operational
as a user? Can a 3D artist which has no specific programming
skills learn Eye-Sys? |
| A3 |
 Absolutely.
In fact, we tasked our lead SpeedTreeCAD graphic artist, Steve
Klipowicz, with creating a visualization from scratch. As part
of a collaboration with AEgis Technologies, we had Steve create
a visualization of chloroform entering the human body. Specifically,
the concentration on chloroform in different parts of the body
over time was to be illustrated.
Steve
took the data from AEgis, bought a few 3D models on-line, and
took to creating the system. The screenshot here shows the results
of his effort, which is a fully animated and interactive visualization.
No programming was necessary -- the entire visualization was
built using standard Eye-Sys objects. More screenshots available
here.
New users adapt to Eye-Sys
very rapidly as we have several tutorials in the documentation
that detail every phase of creating a visualization (input,
manipulation, and display). It takes about a week for users
to become familiar enough with the system to begin producing
fully-featured visualizations. |
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| Q4 |
Eye-Sys
currently imports 3D models in the 3DS, OBJ, IMF and DXF formats.
One could wonder why standard formats such as VRML or Collada
are not supported yet. |
| A4 |
You're
right, Eye-Sys 1.0 does support 3DS, OBJ, DXF, and IMF (our
own internal format) and does not support Collada or VRML. However,
Collada support has been added in version 1.1, to be released
soon. We're quite happy with how well the Collada importer works
and we use it, in part, to answer question #5 below. IDV will
continue to respond to our users and the community by adding
additional format support in subsequent releases.
Please note that users can use the
SDK to add their own model importers, too. Also, the SDK can
also be used to write new data importers, manipulators, and
display objects & systems. This is particularly important
for companies who use their own proprietary formats or for
defense contractors or government organizations using Eye-Sys
with classified formats.
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| Q5 |
Does
Eye-Sys allow to import 3D scenes with a very high polygon count? |
| A5 |
The Eye-Sys development team has a great deal of experience
in squeezing the most of out a system's graphics capabilities.
SpeedTree can render forests with millions of trees covering
hundreds of square kilometers at solid frame rates on commodity
video hardware. IDV brings this same real-time graphical knowhow
to Eye-Sys, which is very lean when it comes to its rendering
code and takes advantage of the power of the GPU it's running
on. Rest assured that for most systems, Eye-Sys is making the
card pump out very close to its realistic capacity.
Take the following system as an example
of how efficiently Eye-Sys can render high polygon counts.
This system employs our scene graph rendering object rendering
four different models read from three different file formats.
The models total 662,442 triangles plus 75,818 line segments:
* A SpeedTree mesh (COLLADA): 95,745
triangles
* An F-18 (3DS): 94,458 triangles
* An aircraft carrier (3DS): 96,939 triangles
* Global map (ESRI Shapefile): 375,300 triangles + 75,818
lines
Benchmark
*
Running on a Dell XPS 720 with an Intel Core 2 6700
(2.66GHz), 2GB RAM, Windows XP Pro SP2
* Graphics card: NVIDIA Quadro FX 37000 (uses the same
G92 core as the 8800 GTS 512MB)
* The window was 1024x576 with 4X multisampling enabled
* Level-of-detail was disabled (the models maintained
full resolution) and two separate lights were active
Under
these conditions, Fraps reported 186 frames per second,
or 123.2 million triangles per second. So yes, not only
will Eye-Sys allow users to import very detailed models,
but it will render them very quickly.
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| Q6 |
The
product specifications show that Eye-Sys can run on Vista. Does
that mean full DirectX 10 support? |
| A6 |
Eye-Sys
does indeed run on Vista, but it is implemented in 100% OpenGL.
We have a lot of DirectX experience from developing SpeedTree
for the PC and Xbox 360 and respect the API a great deal. However,
OpenGL is a more suitable API for scientific and engineering
visualization. We were particularly sensitive to new Eye-Sys
SDK users when we made this decision. OpenGL, with its support
for immediate mode rendering, helps less experienced users get
off the ground faster. Plus, the SDK supplies classes and functions
to help optimize performance, including a class for rendering
using VBOs (Vertex Buffer Objects), a key technology for getting
the most out of a GPU. |
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| Q7 |
How
can applications developed with Eye-Sys be published? (i.e.
executables, on a web page using a plugin...) For which platforms? |
| A7 |
Version
1.1 will have a player exporting option. This essentially compiles
the entire visualization down to a single executable that can
be run on another system that does not have an Eye-Sys license.
The players run on the same platforms that Eye-Sys supports:
Microsoft® Windows® XP or Vista, 32 and 64-bit. |
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| Q8 |
How
difficult is it to add a User Interface to applications developed
with Eye-Sys ? |
| A8 |
 There
is a set of Eye-Sys objects reserved specifically for this.
The main object, called the Control Panel, is a blank slate
that the user can place 2D gadgets and gizmos on that can be
hooked into any part of the rest of the visualization. For example,
sliders can be hooked to a multiplier in an expression object,
the transparency value of part of a model, the scale/rotation/position
of any 3D geometry, or even each other. Control panel components
can also be used to display data as is the case with the gauge
object which can display as a needle-and-dial, horizontal bar
graph, vertical bar graph, and pie chart.
This screenshot shows an example control
panel layout. Note that Eye-Sys will allow the user to configure
the panel with any number of objects in any layout they choose.
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| Q9 |
Both
in terms of software development and marketing, what are your
next objectives concerning Eye-Sys? |
| A9 |
Just
as we did with player exporting and Collada importing in the
upcoming 1.1 release, we will continue to respond to our users'
requests for enhanced functionality. There is a "Feature
requests" section on the Eye-Sys
forum and we monitor it closely.
On the marketing side, given that Eye-Sys
is a new class of software being marketed to users in many
industries where the use of technology is evolving rapidly,
IDV will continue to experiment with various sales and marketing
approaches.
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