![[Plasma Works]](http://www.cse.nau.edu/~apr/logobutton.gif)
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PROJECT SPONSORS
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Plasma Works is a privately owned and funded game software
development operation with six employees.
There are three programmers, two artists, and one designer/story writer. Plasma Works is looking to expand into the 3D engine market
and game development market over the next few years.Plasma Works is currently working on a game, named Storm Saga, which requires a three-dimensional object rendering engine (3D engine). The project is in its mid-design phase and Plasma Works has been planning to license a third party 3D engine. However, the company is interested in an analysis of the value and feasibility of the system and in having experimental spherical coordinate 3D technology developed into a rendering engine. To the knowledge of Plasma Works, a spherical coordinate system has not been implemented in the commercial world. A spherical coordinate system allows for easier rotations, weighted vertices, and easier model interaction.
Abe Pralle of Plasma Works has requested a real-time 3D engine for its upcoming Storm Saga game. The game is currently being implemented in 2D form for testing, but the final product requires the flexibility that a 3D engine provides in order to be competitive in the market. It will be developed and tested as a 3D rendering component of the USGS terrain modeling package, which requires 3D screen and file rendering capabilities and the capability to take advantage of 3D video hardware acceleration.
![[USGS]](http://TerraWeb.wr.usgs.gov/TRS/icons/littleVIS.gif){kind=icon}
![[USGS TerraWeb]](http://TerraWeb.wr.usgs.gov/TRS/icons/trs_icon.gif){kind=icon}
The United States Geological Survey's
Mini Image Processing System (USGS MIPS)
is a fully functional digital image processing
software package developed by the USGS Terrestrial Remote Sensing group.
MIPS has been ported to the Compaq Alpha under True64 UNIX and Open VMS, Silicon Graphics under IRIX64, and
Sun under Solaris.
It has the ability to process and create visualization products using a variety of remotely sensed data including
Landsat MSS and TM, SPOT, AVHRR, RADAR, SONAR, digitized aerial photographs, digital elevation models, and geophysical data. While
the system in general is very powerful, the terrain modeling capabilities lack an interactive interface and many of the features
available in contemporary terrain modeling packages. MIPS has a fully developed X-Windows/Motif user interface for all its programs,
but does not have an intuitive user interface for linking multiple programs together to create a final product.Many software packages, including USGS MIPS, allow the user to have direct access to the software development team, and can request bug fixes, technical and application help, platform support, features and enhancements, and support for new data types. MIPS is an open source package currently supported by a single programmer who depends upon MIPS' encapsulated organization and reusable components to facilitate maintaining the package.
Stuart C. Sides of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has requested a terrain modeling package be built to supercede the existing labor intensive terrain rendering capabilities in the USGS MIPS image processing system. The package will enable users to interact with a digital elevation model as a method of setting parameters for rendering high quality perspective views, create fly-by movies, and export a model into a portable format for sharing or web distribution. The interactive interface will increase the productivity of the users of the package. A variety of available output formats will allow the users to create visualization products without needing to go to a third-party package, decreasing costs by saving on labor and third-party software. Because of the small user base, USGS MIPS software can be upgraded with new features quickly based on as little as one user request, an important feature not offered by third-party vendors.
![[USGS Flagstaff Field Center]](http://wwwflag.wr.usgs.gov/USGSFlag/gifs/flagusgs_st.gif)
The OPS systems administration team currently supports all computer hardware, software, and network issues at
USGS Flagstaff Field Center.
They keep up to date on all developments in the computer environment to insure that the users know about any improvements that can
help their productivity. Users are given one-on-one, personalized support. Most users access multi-user UNIX-based systems through
X-server interfaces running on Windows-based systems. On average, there are four users per system, with two systems devoted to a
single user each. The external users of the software developed by the Astrogeology group are on a variety of different types of computers.
OPS maintains several different platforms and operating systems for the software developers. Budget is always an important factor, and OPS
strives to find low-cost solutions whenever possible.
The USGS Astrogeology team and the support organization Office of Program Support (OPS) at the Flagstaff Field Center are moving away
from the high-end UNIX workstations and servers towards Intel based Linux machines. As Intel based machines have become faster
and more powerful, it has become feasible to use them as workstations and servers, decreasing both the cost of the system and the
cost of maintaining the hardware and operating system. Bu, Intel systems still lag behind the high-end systems. Consequently, there
is interest in using clusters to recapture the lost processing power. Utilization of multiprocessor clusters will allow computationally
intensive processes, such as rendering three-dimensional terrain models, to be finished more quickly and efficiently. Currently, in-house
image processing software systems do not take advantage of the parallel processing potential of clustered or multiprocessor machines.
Margaret Johnson of the USGS OPS has requested an inquiry into the advantages, feasibility, and required resources for the implementation of multiprocessor systems, especially clustered systems, in an image processing production environment. The terrain modeling package will have some processor intensive functionality and will serve as a prototype for parallelized image processing software for the purpose of benchmarking and demonstration of the concept. If successful, clustered systems could replace high-end, high maintenance workstations in the future.
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