Welcome to HPVC

About Us

About us:
The Visualization Center houses a high performance 3-D immersive visualization system, a laboratory for the research and development of real-time 3-D immersive visualization software, an OpenGL education program and an ACCESS (Alliance Center for Collaboration, Education, Science and Software) Grid Center with state of the art audio / video collaboration technology.

Through advanced software design customizing modular software components the Center of Higher Learning Visualization Center laboratory is able to streamline the development of new visualization applications. A variety of large datasets from the Department of Defense, academia and industry are visualized on systems from the powerful RAVE II down to the laptop allowing the user significant flexibility.

Real-time 3-D visualization is a powerful analytical tool that facilitates rapid analysis of the data by directing the analyst's focus to the most relevant areas of interest as well as by providing a peripheral perspective for how a specific area of interest fits within the larger framework of the study. The Visualization Center offers multiple visualization platform solutions from the small scale laptop solution through the midrange desktop solution to large scale PC cluster. Different work environments contribute unique benefits to the analytical process, therefore flexibility of visualization platforms provide solutions for these different work environments.

Current Projects:
Strategic Partnership with India-Based CORE Projects and Technologies

CHL has teamed with CORE to be their principal partner in training a visualization team that will operate numerous visualization centers throughout India. Additionally, CORE explored the idea of creating 450 centers that would require a staff of approximately 300 people. As a result, 15 students from India have been trained to operate the centers. A second group of 14 students began training in May 2008 CORE current partnership projects include engineering and diverse medical imaging applications.

Coastal Zone Mapping and Imaging Lidar System (CZMIL)

The Coastal Zone Mapping and Imaging Lidar System (CZMIL) is a partnership between industry (Optech, Int.), government (Joint Airborne Lidar Bathymetry Technical Center of eXpertise, JALBTCX) and academic agencies (University of Southern Mississippi along with the Center of Higher Learning). The chief objective is to produce a next-generation LIDAR system to obtain high-resolution hydrographic and topographic datasets. The Center of Higher Learning plays a role in enhancing the manual editing capabilities for the LIDAR data being collected. Upon completion, these manual editing tools will allow analysts to more accurately assess invalid or erroneous waveforms, as well as edit key attributes in the datasets. When finished, JALBTCX will be utilizing the system to support the coastal mapping and charting requirements of the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), the US Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Future:
The projected scope of the Visualization Center embodies the training of technologies and techniques of advanced immersive visualization. Additionally,the development of applications for commercial enterprise will become more of a focal point with applications ranging from K-12 educational tools, collegiate level educational tools, and applications in medicine and medical education.

Personnel:

Currently the Visualization Center at CHL is staffed by Conrad Johnson, our director, as well as Dr. Supreeya Miller, Gary Morris and Mandy Frazure. Bios on each can be found here: