• Ultra High Definition Video Wall

    One high configuration computer is connected to a number of monitors that display various images and data concurrently.

  • Leading Edge Vizualizations

    The combination of research data, visualization wall and haptic technology will allow researchers and students to move forward to the next level of experimentation process.

  • State of the Art Facilities

    The facilities available at the VizLab offer state of the art visualization technology to aid in teaching and research. Schedule an event at the VizLab and take advantage of the capabilities of our facilities.

  • Haptic Capabilities

    Technology that takes advantage of a user's sense of touch by applying forces, vibrations, or motions to the user. The fairly new technology is gaining widespread acceptance as a key part of virtual reality systems, adding the sense of touch to previously visual-only solutions.

  • High Performance Computing

    A few examples of HPC technologies are the simulation of car crashes for structural design, molecular interaction for new drug design and the airflow over automobiles or airplanes.

 

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Vizlab Facilities

The Vizualization Wall

The UTSA Advanced Visualization Laboratory is anchored by a 14.5-foot-wide by six-foot-tall visualization wall (VizWall), a 98 Mpixel tiled display of two dozen 30" Dell UltraSharp Widescreen U3011 monitors. Each monitor boasts twice as many pixels as a high definition television.

  • Features two dozen 30" Dell UltraSharp Widescreen U3011 monitors
  • 14.5-foot-wide x six-foot-tall tiled display (6 monitors wide x 4 monitors tall)
  • Maximum resolution: 2560 x 1600 pixels/monitor (98 Mpixels total)

Haptic Devices

The UTSA Advanced Visualization Laboratory is the only visualization laboratory in Texas to feature the Quanser HD2, a high definition haptic device with touch and feel for virtual models generated by computer simulations. The HD2 haptic device provides six degrees of freedom (6-DOF) motion and five degrees of freedom (5-DOF) force/torque feedback that allows researchers to precisely interact with sophisticated three-dimensional computational models. An 82" three-dimensional stereoscopic television monitor enhances research conducted on the haptic device.

  • Quanser HD2 high definition haptic device/li>
  • Allows for 6 degrees of freedom (6-DOF) including Cartesian plane, roll, pitch and yaw
  • Singularity-free operation/li>
  • Provides 5-DOF of force/torque feedback/li>
  • Large work-envelope, low-inertia, friction and backdrivable/li>
  • Provides up to 20,000 N/m stiffness/li>
  • Force isotropy: uniform force capability mimics human hand

High Performance Computing Cluster

A high-performance computing cluster, comprised of 12 high-speed graphics-enhanced LINUX workstations comprising 144 CPUs and 24 NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 graphics cards, drives the Vis-Wall. An InfiniBand communications network operating at 40 Gigabits per second connects the 12 computing nodes.

  • Head Node
    • Dell Power Edge R710 with dual hex-core X5650 2.66 GHz Intel Xeon Processors
    • 48 GB (12 x 4 1333MHz Dual Ranked RDIMMs) RAM
    • 500 GB SATA hard drive
    • NVIDIA Quadro FX 5800 graphics cards
  • Computing Cluster Nodes
    • 12 high-speed graphic enhanced LINUX workstations operating as one Rocks cluster
    • Dell Precision T7500 with dual hex-core X5660 2.8 GHz Intel Processors
    • 24GB/node RAM, NVIDIA Quadro FX 5800 graphics cards with 4 GB of Video RAM & 500GB SATA hard drive
  • Storage Node
    • Dell R710 Server with a Dell Power Vault MD3000 external RAID array (storage node) with dual port controllers and 15 450 GB 15K RPM SA SCSI 6Gbps 3.5in Hot-plug Hard Drives
  • Backbone
  • InfiniBand communications network with a data transfer speed of 40 Gb/sec.
  • A 10G closed network over Internet2 links researchers from UT Health Science Center at San Antonio
  • Juniper Core and edge switches with Fiber and Cat6a SYSTIMAX Certified cabling is used on the UTSA side.

Other Features

The UTSA Advanced Visualization Laboratory Includes:

  • An 82" three-dimensional stereoscopic television monitor
  • Videoconferencing
  • A smart board
  • Remote access
  • Classroom style seating for 21 individuals and a conference table with seating for eight

Installed Software

These machines are running Ubuntu 10.04 with the following installed software:

  • DisplayCluster - from TACC at UT Austin, a distributed visualization system for tiled displays.
  • SAGE - Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment - Scalable Pixel Distribution for High-Resolution Collaborative Visualization on Tiled Displays
  • Magic Carpet - a cluster based image viewer for tiled displays
  • CGLX - a framework for scalable, distributed, high-performance visualization environments
  • OpenMPI - Version 1.7a1r25227 - compiled with CUDA support.