What is QuickView? ¶
QuickView is an open-source, interactive visualization tool designed to help Earth system modelers take a quick look at a collection of physical quantities in their simulation files. The physical quantities are presented in the form of contour plots on global or regional maps. Currently, QuickView supports cubed-sphere grids consisting of either Gauss-Lobatto-Legendre (GLL) nodes (i.e., the ne*np4 grids) or finite-volume grid cells (ne*pg2, ne*pg3, etc.).
Under the hood, ParaView and VTK supply the data-processing and graphics capabilities, while trame, a Python package, is used to build a browser-based graphical User Interface (UI) to provide intuitive and task-focused controls of the visualization so that users do not need to operate ParaView or VTK themselves.
Under the hood, ParaView and VTK supply the data-processing and graphics capabilities, while trame, a Python framework for interactive applications, connects these capabilities to a browser-based graphical user interface. Trame provides the interface controls, communicates user selections to the visualization code, and delivers updated images to the display. Together, these tools let QuickView provide intuitive, task-focused controls for exploring model output without requiring users to operate ParaView or VTK themselves.
Useful resources: see linked page.
Why QuickView? ¶
While comprehensive visualization tools like ParaView and VisIt are widely used in the scientific community, they often have very steep learning curves—requiring users who are not experts in visual analytics to navigate unfamiliar interfaces, functions, and jargon. Moreover, these general-purpose tools may lack out-of-the-box support for key requirements in Earth system sciences, such as globe and map projections or support for specific data formats and structures, leading to time-consuming customization. QuickView was developed to address these limitations by offering a focused, user-friendly platform that streamlines the analysis of atmospheric simulations. It minimizes the need for the model developers and users to write custom scripts, thereby shortening the path from data to insight.
The primary goal of QuickView is a first glance at the contents in a simulation data file, i.e., a first inspection of the characteristic values of physical quantities and their variations with respect to geographical location, altitude, and time, as well as a quick inspection across different physical quantities for similarities or distinctions. Compared to earlier and widely used tools like ncview and ncvis, QuickView has an emphasis on multivariate visualization.
Key Features ¶
- Intuitive, minimalist interface tailored for Earth system modeling.
- Multi-variable visualization.
- Persistent sessions—pick up where you left off.
- Currently supporting cubed-sphere grids in a variety of configurations and representations. Examples can be found in the visualization gallery.
Project Background ¶
The lead developer of QuickView version 1 was Abhishek Yenpure. The lead developer from version 2 onwards is Sebastien Jourdain. Other key contributors include Patrick O'Leary, Berk Geveci, Dan Lipsa, and Will Dunklin at Kitware, and Hui Wan and Kai Zhang at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
QuickView is a product of an interdisciplinary collaboration supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) and Biological and Environmental Research (BER) via the Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) program.
The development of QuickView used resources of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), a U.S. Department of Energy User Facility.
