Free visualization software

[Lee Elson]

Dear Colleague:

We have made available the first full release of our free Java-based
science visualization and analysis package, WebWinds.
To download a copy of this release, go to http://webwinds.jpl.nasa.gov.
Key features of this package include:

* Cross platform capability: Windows (95/98/NT), Mac, Unix/Linux.

* The ability to present and manipulate 2 and 3 dimensional data in
  a variety of 1 and 2 dimensional display tools.

* The ability to subset and subsample data on input or display output,
  making it possible to handle very large data sets.

* Simultaneous display and analysis of multiple data sets which may be
  unrelated.

* Interactive data, image and color manipulation.

* The ability to act as a Web browser helper application, making it
possible to
  survey scientific data archives in interactive mode.

* A scripting language which allows session configuration, re-run
  and real-time network collaboration, automatically.

* A context sensitive help system.

* Complete documentation including examples.


This version has several new features:

1) Modified or original data may be saved in several formats including
FITS and NetCDF.

2) Most types of files may be stacked together (concatenated) to produce
a larger file.
This allows, for example, daily maps of a quantity to be combined to
produce a file
which can be animated. Subfiles within a file can also be concatenated
in some cases.

3) HDF files can be displayed using included geolocation information.

4) A new Overlay tool allows tabular (ASCII) data to be superimposed on
an Image.
These overlays can show variations in symbol size, color and range and
thus
represent the numerical value of the tabular data.

5) Shortcuts can be generated automatically with macros.

6) A new Pause tool allows the temporary delay of the execution of a
script,
allowing, e.g., the dynamic selection of a file.

7) Separate, complete installation packages for PC, Mac, Sun, SGI and
Linux systems. This
enables 'one stop' shopping and simple installation.

8) WebWinds is compatible with Java 2 (JDK 1.2).

9) The ability to display several types of coordinate projections for
some types of data.

10) An enhanced capability to read in different data types.