Discovering immersive and interactive 3D simulation environments for data analysis and integrated software frameworks.

Visualization

4HLRS

HLRSHigh Performance Computing Center Stuttgart

The High Performance Compu-ting Center of Stuttgart (HLRS) of the University of Stuttgart is the first National Supercompu-ting Center in Germany and is offering services to both acade-mic users and industry. Apart from the operation of supercom-puters HLRS activities include teaching and training in distribu-ted systems, software enginee-ring and programming models, as well as development of new technologies. HLRS is an acti-ve player in the European rese-arch arena with special focus on Scientific Excellence and Indust-rial Leadership initiatives.

Our Network: HLRS is tightly connected to academia and indus-try through long term partners-hips with global market players such as Porsche and T-Systems, as well as worldwide companies, HPC centres and Universities. Particular attention is given to collaboration with Small and Me-dium Enterprises (SMEs).

Our Infrastructure: HLRS ope-rates a CRAY XC40 supercom-puter (peak performance > 7 Pe-taFlops), as well as a variety of smaller systems, reaching from clusters to cloud resources.

ProgrammingModels & Tools

CloudComputing

Optimization & Scalability

Energy Efficiency

Exascale Computing

Services

Big Data, Analytics & Management

Visualization

Featured Topics

5HLRS

Director HLRSProf. Dr. Michael Resch

Our Experience: HLRS has been at the forefront of regional, nati-onal and European research and innovation over the last 20 years. During this time, HLRS has parti-cipated successfully in more than 90 European research and inno-vation projects.

Our Expertise: HLRS is a lea-ding innovation center, applying software engineering methods to HPC and Cloud for the bene-fit of multiple application domains such as automotive, engineering, health, mobility, security, and energy. Thanks to the close inter-action with industry, the center’s capabilities and expertise sup-port the whole lifecycle of simu-lation covering research aspects, pre-competitive development and preparation for production. The HLRS innovation group, which actively examines and tests new technologies, can bring into pro-jects expertise on leading edge technologies hardware and scale up data analysis techniques.

6Visualization

Visualization

Visualization has always been an important research tool for science and industry, as it enab-les researchers to depict results, problems, and optimization po-tential in a vivid, illuminating way which could not be provided by a pure sequence of bits and bytes. With the increasing complexity of simulation models and, in turn, the size of datasets, the simula-tion, analysis, and visualization process has become much more time-consuming. For complex en-gineering and science procedures that need high accuracy and re-liability of their respective visuali-zed outcomes, high-performance computing (HPC) serves as an in-dispensable tool by being able to process large and complex data-sets in short time.To this end, the High-Performan-ce Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS) built the CAVE—a cube with a side length of 2.7m that uses a large variety of virtual and augmented reality equipment.

This enables researchers, develo-pers but also society and politici-ans to interact with a fully immer-sive, 3D simulation environment to analyze and discuss their com-putations or computations made for them. The floor of the CAVE is made of a three-layer laminated safety glass, covered by a rear projection screen, while the walls and ceiling are built of dark plexi-glass screens.To make the best possible use of the in-house visualization inf-rastructure, HLRS researchers continually develop specific soft-ware environments, frameworks, and graphics toolkits that meet the requirements of an HPC sys-tem environment. Especially the COVISE toolkit and its successor Vistle are taken up world-wide. With this brochure, we invite you to learn more about applied visua-lization in cases such as city plan-ning and urban development.

7Visualization

Project Overview

COVISE - A Collaborative and Distributed Software Environment for High Performance Simulation and Visualization

ODDLOT - Road Networks for Driving Simu-lators ODDLOT: The OpenDrive® Designer

Urban Lab City Quarters 4.0 - Reallabor Stadtquartiere 4.0

Virvo - Virtual Reality Volume Rendering

Visdral - Virtual Investigation, Simulation and Documentation of Road Accidents via Laserscanning

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Vistle - A Software Environment for High-Per-formance Simulation and Parallel Visualization

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Page 20bwVisu - A Scalable Service for Remote Visualization of Scientific Data

8COVISE

COVISE

COVISE, the COllaborative Visualiz-ation and Simulation Environment is an extensible distributed soft-ware environment. It integrates simulations on supercomputers, post-processing and collaborative visualization functionalities in a se-amless manner.COVISE applications are compo-sed of multiple tasks which are

A Collaborative and Distributed Software Environmentfor High-Performance Simulation and Visualization

modeled as operating system processes. The corresponding work flows are configured in a graphical pipeline editor and can span different machines. COVISE allows several users to work in a collaborative synchronized sessi-on, both on desktop systems and with OpenCOVER in immersive virtual environments.

9COVISE

COVISE has shown its versatility with many commercial users and in research projects at the High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS) and its part-ners. It fulfills the needs of diver-se branches such as automotive industry, architecture, hydraulic machinery, and archeology. More than 50 file formats such as En-sight, CFX, and StarCD are sup-ported.The development of COVISE was initiated in European Community funded projects in cooperation with industry.COVISE is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License and available on GitHub. Its de-velopment is led by HLRS in a con-tinuous effort since 1993.

ContactDr. Uwe Wössner

Phone: +49 (0) 711/ 685-65790

E-Mail: woessner@hlrs.de

Further Informationwww.hlrs.de/covise/

Supported Platforms: � Windows � Linux � Mac OS

10ODDLOT

the road network, the landscape, vegetation and road signs and traffic lights. A standard file for-mat has the advantage of easy exchange between different simu-lation environments, applications and companies. OpenDRIVE® is a standard to describe a road network, including maps, objects, surface properties and signaling. Particular specifications for cer-tain driving simulators can be ad-ded via user defined tags.

Road Networks for Driving SimulatorsODDLOT: The OpenDRIVE® Designer

Current research in the field of autonomous driving, the develop-ment of advanced driver assistan-ce systems (ADAS) and new regulations for the safety of auto-nomous features, require extensi-ve testing in virtual environments and simulators.Roads, signals and road objects for driving simulators have to be modelled as close to reality as possible. A lot of time is neces-sary to collect data and model

ODDLOT

11ODDLOT

ContactJutta Sauer

Dr. Uwe Wössner

Phone: +49 (0) 711/ 685-65798

+49 (0) 711/ 685-65790

E-Mail: sauer@hlrs.de

woessner@hlrs.de

Further Informationwww.github.com/hlrs-vis/covise

To ease the creation of virtual driving simulator tracks the High Performance Computing Center at the University of Stuttgart (HLRS) is developing an Open-DRIVE® Editor. The so called ODDLOT is part of COVISE, the Collaborative Visualization and Simulation Environment of the HLRS, an Open Source package (LGPL2+) available on GitHub. ODDLOT is adapting to the ongo-ing extensions of the OpenDRI-VE® standard, making it possible to describe dynamically changing elements in the future.In ODDLOT the user can load maps and draw roads in a 2-di-mensional graphical interface using different prototypes, speci-

fied by the number of lanes, their width and road markings. Roads can be linked together, allowing to manipulate the driving deci-sions of autonomous intelligent vehicles in the scene. Junctions can be created automatically by defining the area of intersection or manually in a specialized edi-tor. ODDLOT comes with a bund-le of common German signals as well as Chinese signals to make the placement of signs easy. Dif-ferent kinds of barriers are availa-ble too, but new objects can also be described in an XML file. Tiles can be connected to build large networks, thereby reducing the modelling time by reusing already existing tiles.

12Urban Lab City Quaters 4.0

The digital transformation of eco-nomy and society is one of the most comprehensive changes of our time. Ever-shorter innovati-on cycles of digital products and processes are conflicting with the longevity and path dependency of our cities and their infrastructu-res. In many cases, however, ur-ban planning and decision-making processes are still carried out with conventional, highly regula-ted procedures and tools, which can hardly keep pace with current developments.

Reallabor Stadtquartiere 4.0

Addressing the digital transfor-mation of planning and decisi-on-making processes involving all relevant stake-holders, Urban Lab City Quarters 4.0 focuses on questions such as:

� How can future-oriented influ-encing factors be reflected in urban planning models?

� What is the role of citizens and their local expertise in anticipa-ting and planning the future?

� Which formats, models, and tools – including future scena-rios, interactive and immersive visualizations as well as simula-tions – can help as an interfa-ce between idea development and planning, citizenship and a city’s authorities?

Urban Lab City Quaters 4.0

13Urban Lab City Quaters 4.0

ContactDr. Uwe Wössner

Phone: +49 (0) 711/ 685-65790

E-Mail: woessner@hlrs.de

Further Informationwww.reallabor-stadtquartiere.de

www.hlrs.de/reallabor

The project follows a strategy of co-designing research and joint knowledge acquisition with citi-zens and other local actors. We are developing forward-looking procedures and digital tools th-rough a series of real-world ex-periments. These real-world ex-periments are conducted and evaluated in cooperation with the cities of Stuttgart and Herren-berg in ongoing urban planning projects. Urban Lab City Quarters 4.0 is funded by the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts Baden-Württemberg.

Project InformationFunding Organisation: Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Science, Research, and the ArtsRuntime: 01.01.2016 - 31.12.2018

Project Partners � University of Stuttgart:• Stuttgart Research Center

for Interdisciplinary Risk and Innovation Studies (ZIRIUS)

• Institute of Human Factors and Technolgy Management (IAT)

• Faculty of Architecture and Urban Design

• High Performan-ce Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS)

� Fraunhofer Institute for Indust-rial Engineering, Stuttgart

� Kommunikationsbüro Ulmer, Stuttgart

� The cities of Herrenberg and Stuttgart

14Virvo

Volume rendering is used to dis-play three-dimensional scalar da-tasets, for example the tempe-rature distribution in a car cabin or proton densities in MRI scans (see image on the left). Traditional approaches display only a subset of the dataset, most of the data can only be displayed by varying the selected parameters. With di-rect volume rendering, the entire dataset can be displayed in one image. Every scalar value is assi-gned both a color and a transpa-rency by a user definable transfer function. VIRVO also has the capability to simultaneously display multiple channels of scalar values. The most frequently used technique for displaying volume data is to slice the dataset and display it with a stack of textures (3-D tex-tures). This requires large texture memory on the display computer.

Virtual Reality Volume Rendering

VIRVO is an open source frame-work for direct volume rendering. It is an integral part of the COVISE visualization and simulation en-vironment, which was developed at the computing center of the University of Stuttgart. The development of VIRVO was initiated at HLRS within the sco-pe of two DFG (German Research Foundation) funded special rese-arch areas. VIRVO is developed further within the DeskVox project on GitHub.

Virvo

15Virvo

VIRVO offers alternative techniques, which render the vo-lume data on a remote and po-werful parallel computer. The display machine receives only the rendered images and does not have to deal with a large amount of volume data. The shearwarp algorithm is used for rendering volume data very quickly and in software, without the need for cutting-edge hardware on the dis-play machine. For higher image fi-delity, vectorized CPU ray casting can also be used.

ContactDr. Uwe Wössner

Phone: +49 (0) 711/ 685-65790

E-Mail: woessner@hlrs.de

Further Informationwww.github.com/deskvox/deskvox/

16Visdral

Visdral aims at developing advan-ced methods in computer aided crash analysis by progressing data acquisition as well as data processing. These methods inclu-de virtually reconstructing the sce-ne by describing road surface, en-vironment, vehicles and persons involved in the accident in stan-dardized formats. This paves the road to new simulation techniques building structural simulation mo-dels from 3D-scanned data.

Virtual Investigation, Simulation and Documen-tation of Road Accidents via Laserscanning

Visdral

Computer aided crash analysis is a central element for the identifi-cation of accident causes. It ser-ves solving of legal issues as well as optimization of active and pas-sive safety of vehicles. Further-more, constructional measures at black spots for accidents can be taken to prevent accidents. 3D-scanners have become widely available for many applications. They allow capturing of location and vehicles but lead to massive amount of data in form of point clouds.

17Visdral

ContactDr. Uwe Wössner

Phone: +49 (0) 711/ 685-65790

E-Mail: woessner@hlrs.de

Further Informationwww.hlrs.de/de/about-us/

research/current-projects/

visdral/

Figures 1 and 2: Virtual crash scene in-

vestigation combining 3D-scanned data

with the results of a FEM simulation in a

virtual interactive environment.

18Vistle

Shared memory is used for trans-fering data between modules on a single node. Work flows can be distributed across several clus-ters. For rendering in immersive projection systems, Vistle uses OpenCOVER. Visualization para-meters can be manipulated from within the virtual environment. Large data sets can be display-ed with OpenGL sort-last parallel rendering and depth compositing. For scaling with the simulation on remote HPC resources, a hybrid sort-last/sort first parallel ray casting renderer based on the Em-bree CPU raytracing framework is available. Hybrid remote rendering allows to combine its output with local rendering, while ensuring smooth interactivity by decoupling it from remote rendering. The Vistle system is modular and can be extended easily with additi-onal visualization algorithms. Sour-ce code is available on GitHub and licensed under the LPGL.

A Software Environment for High-Performance Simulation and Parallel Visualization

Vistle

Vistle, the VISualization Testing La-boratory for Exascale computing, is an extensible software environ-ment that integrates simulations on supercomputers, post-proces-sing and parallel interactive visua-lization.It is under active develop-ment at HLRS since 2012 within the European project CRESTA and bwVisu. The objective is to provi-de a highly scalable successor to COVISE, exploiting data, task and pipeline parallelism in hybrid shared and distributed memory environments with acceleration hardware. Domain decomposi-tions used during simulation can be reused for visualization.A Vistle work flow consists of several pro-cessing modules, each of which is a parallel MPI program that uses OpenMP within nodes. These can be configured graphically or from Python.

19Vistle

ContactMartin Aumüller

Phone: +49 (0) 711/ 685-65996

E-Mail: aumueller@hlrs.de

Further Informationwww.hlrs.de/vistle

The figure shows an interactive parallel visualization of a pump tur-bine. The simulation was conduc-ted by IHS.

20bwVisu

this context: streaming of images on the one hand, and transfer-ring data with subsequent local post-processing and rendering on the other. Techniques from this spectrum are combined to enab-le interactivity when handling large data.bwVisu provides powerful visualiza-tion resources to scientific institu-tions in Baden-Württemberg. The objective is to develop a service for remote visualization of scientific data. Cloud technologies will pro-vide high scalability. At HLRS the focus is on establishing Vistle as a scalable remote visualization tool. With a hybrid remote rendering method integrated with the Open-COVER renderer, it scales from desktop and VR glasses to CAVEs.

A Scalable Service for Remote Visualization of Scientific Data

bwVisu

Numeric simulations are essen-tial to many scientific disciplines. Scientific visualization, data mi-ning, and information visualization are vital tools to leverage these si-mulations in order to gain insight. The ever-increasing computing po-wer and the larger data sizes du-ring visualization allow increasingly precise simulations. Centralization and shared use of these resour-ces makes the costs for procure-ment and operation of these sys-tems sustainable.The classic idea of remote visuali-zation developed in this context. It comprises a central powerful com-pute and visualization architecture and streaming of images to a re-mote workplace. Two well-establis-hed approaches mark the extre-mes of what can be imagined in

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Project InformationFunding Organisation: Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Science, Research, and the Arts Runtime: 01.11.2017 – 31.10.2020

The project is lead by Universität Heidelberg. Other partners are Universität Freiburg, Karlsruher Institut für Technologie, and Hei-delberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS).

bwVisu

ContactMartin Aumüller

Phone: +49 711 685-65996

E-Mail: aumueller@hlrs.de

Further Informationwww.bwvisu.de

Project Partners � Universität Heidelberg (coordi-nator)

� Universität Freiburg � Karlsruher Institut für Techno-logie

� Heidelberg Institute for Theo-retical Studies (HITS)

High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS) University of Stuttgart Nobelstrasse 19 | 70569 Stuttgart | Germany Phone: +49 (0)711 / 685 87 269 Fax: +49 (0)711 / 685 87 209 Mail: pr@hlrs.de www.hlrs.de

Editor: Lena Bühler, Eric Gedenk, Dr. Bastian Koller Design: Janine Jentsch, Ellen Ramminger Picture Credits: Cover and Interior shot: Bohris Lehner for HLRS Back cover shot: Simon Sommer for HLRS © HLRS 2018