Visualization Laboratory
University of Hyogo

Department of Social Infomation Science
Graduate School of Information Science

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VISMO

Overview

VISMO (VISualization MOdule) is a library for in-situ visualization. It is provided as a Fortran Module. Users have to simply write "use vismo" in the simulation code and call a few subroutines to visualize the data array held by the simulation code. No graphics hardware is required for drawing. Since it is a library, you can also use it to build visualization programs in the Fortran language. Unlike many In-Situ visualization tools, VISMO does not require OS Mesa or VTK (Visualization Toolkit). All you need is a Fortran compiler to get it working. In addition, if you have a C compiler and LibPNG, you can use it more conveniently. To date, it has been used by my collaborators and their colleagues. We have used it on several supercomputers in Japan, such as Plasma Simulator (National Institute for Fusion Science, Hitachi SR16000, Fujitsu FX100, NEC SX-Aurora), Oakforest-PACS(University of Tokyo), Earth Simulator (JAMSTEC, NEC SX-ACE). Also, it can be used on even PCs. (Actually, I use Mac Book Air and iMac for development.)

Download

You can download VISMO (online distribution version) on VISMO download page

Design

Requirements for simulations to couple with VISMO

Parallelization
The hybrid programming model (MPI+OpenMP) is applied to VISMO. So, yo use VISMO, your simulation codes are required to be parallelized by MPI besed on domain decomposition. It would be better If your codes are parallelized by OpenMP too.
Coordinate systems
  • Cartesian coordinates
  • Yin-Yang grid
There are subtle differences between two libraries, but the basic usage is almost the same.

Visualization Methods

Basic visualization methods are implemented. I have visualized a lot of large scale data as a member of visualization group of the Earth Simulator Center. From the experiemce, I chose the basic methods and incorporated them to VISMO.

Why Fortran?

Visualization software is usually written in C or C ++, but it seems that many domestic (Japanese) simulation researchers are using Fortran, so I programmed it in Fortran. Also, VISMO draws images by software rendering completely without using OSMesa because I think that it would be difficult to install many libraries to the domestic (Japanese) HPC. If all you need to use it is a compiler, you can use it in many HPC environments. Of course, you have to write some parts such as Makefile by yourselves.

Publications

VISMO

N. Ohno and H. Ohtani, "Development of In-Situ Visualization Tool for PIC Simulation", Plasma Fusion Res. 9, 3401071 (2014) External link(jspf)
N. Ohno and A. Kageyama, "In-situ visualization library for Yin-Yang grid simulations", Earth Planets Space 73, 158 (2021) External link (EPS)

Papers on visualization(making use of and citing VISMO or VISMO-YY)

A. Kageyama and N. Sakamoto, "4D street view: a video-based visualization method", PeerJ Computer Science, Vol.6, e305 (2020)　 External link(PeerJ Computer Science)
A. Kageyama, N. Sakamoto, H. Miura and N. Ohno, "Interactive Exploration of the In-Situ Visualization of a Magnetohydrodynamic Simulation", Plasma and Fusion Research, Vol. 15, 1401065 (2020) External link(jspf)
KAGEYAMA Akira, SAKAMOTO Naohisa and OHNO Nobuaki, "4D Street View: A New Visualization Method for Computer Simulations" (in Japanese), J. Plasma Fusion Res., Vol.96, No.4, pp.199‐206 (2020) External link(jspf)

Papers (citing VISMO or VISMO-YY)

A. Kageyama and N. Ohno, "Chiral pattern in nonrotating spherical convection", Phys. Rev. Fluids 7, 013502 (2022) External link
H. Miura, "Extended Magnetohydrodynamic Simulations of Decaying, Homogeneous, Approximately-Isotropic and Incompressible Turbulence", Fluids, Vol.4, (2019), 3401030
K. Yoshida, H. Miura and Y. Tsuji, "Spectrum in the Strong Turbulence Region of Gross–Pitaevskii Turbulence", Journal of Low Temperature Physics, Vol.196, pp.211-217 (2019)
H. Miura, J. Yang, and T. Gotoh, "Hall magnetohydrodynamic turbulence with a magnetic Prandtl number larger than unity", Phys. Rev. E 100, 063207 (2019)

Others

Movies: There are four videos created by Professor Kageyama at Kobe University using VISMO as a visualization engine. 03-hall-mhd.mov uses the simulation code, coupled with VISMO, of Professor Miura at the National Institute for Fusion Science.
An image from H. Miura, J. Yang, and T. Gotoh, "Hall magnetohydrodynamic turbulence with a magnetic Prandtl number larger than unity", Phys. Rev. E 100, 063207 (2019) that rendered by using VISMO was chosen as a PRE's Kaleidoscope (Dec 2019) .


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