[fitsbits] New release of free visualization software

[Lee Elson]

Dear Colleague:                         April 9, 2001


We have made available the third release of our free, Java-based
science visualization and analysis package, WebWinds. This complete
package runs under most operating systems (Windows, Mac OS, Unix,
Linux) and is easy to download and install.  To download a copy of this
release, go to http://webwinds.jpl.nasa.gov.

Key new features of version 3.00 include:

-Microsoft's bitmapped (BMP) file format as well as tiff and geotiff
        can now be read.

-Volume rendering tools, IsoView and OrthoView are added. These allow
        data to be displayed as 3D volumes.

-A new display for Tabular data, XYZPlot is added. This is a 3D display
        of 2D data.

-Data from the EOS Terra instrument, MISR, completes the suite of EOS
        data types that can be georeferenced.

-Data that are referenced to geographic coordinates (latitude and
        longitude) can be displayed in several different projections.

-Software is bundled in a compact package- easier to update.

-A client/server architecture as been implemented.

This last feature is significant since it allows the user to distribute
file selection, subsetting and subsampling capabilities to other
computers on the Internet. This makes it possible to put software on a
'server' computer that has fast, direct access to data files and have
that server provide data to client computers anywhere on the Internet.
Among the possible uses of this capability are:

1) A group of users who access EOS data from a local archive by
transferring files (e.g. by FTP) to a desktop machine would be able to
access the files from the archive directly. The users and/or the data
could be co-located at one site or distributed among many sites. If the
files are large (e.g. MODIS, MISR, ASTER) users would be able to do
subsetting at the archive instead of transferring large files to their
machines and perhaps only using a small part of the data.

2) Local data could be made publically available (e.g. by putting it in
an anonymous FTP directory) in conjunction with a description of the
data on a Website. Visitors could then browse files at this site,
visualizing those that might be of interest. When combined with our
easy to use scripting capability, data providers can create an
automated process that configures a WebWinds session in a way
determined by the provider. No programming is necessary.

The server capability does not require a Web browser, will not work over
a
modem, returns real scientific data (e.g. floating point numbers, not
gif or jpeg images) and is secure. If you would like more information,
and/or help setting up a server please contact me.

Regards,
Lee Elson
elson at magus.jpl.nasa.gov