Advanced Visual Systems launches major new release of AVS/Express; For the first time, industry's leading visualization software available in both developer and end user versions.

WALTHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 24, 1996--Advanced Visual Systems today unveiled a major new release of AVS/Express, the industry's leading software for applying 3D visualization and imaging techniques to complex data and applications. Now available in two editions - a Visualization Edition for end-users and a Developer Edition for technical and commercial application developers - the new AVS/Express 3.0 is the industry's only software that lets users build highly sophisticated 3D visualization applications quickly and easily using a unique object-oriented "drag-and-drop" environment.

The new AVS/Express 3.0 Visualization Edition puts this state-of-the art visualization capability into the hands of end-users for the first time. At the same time, the Developer Edition broadens the product's appeal for application developers by incorporating numerous new ease-of-use features and enhanced programming capabilities.

According to Tim Rozmajzl of the Ohio Supercomputer Center, "It's extremely powerful, extremely flexible, and loaded with functionality. You can pretty much do whatever you want related to scientific visualization with AVS/Express 3.0."

AVS/Express is a multi-platform, component-based software environment for visualizing complex data and for building applications with interactive visualization and graphics functions. It provides Kits that contain numerous reusable components for data visualization, image processing, graphics display, database connectivity and user interface building. It uses an object-oriented visual programming interface to connect these components to generate interactive 3D visualizations, as well as 2D plots and graphs.

Advanced Visual Systems currently offers a separate line of products, called the Application Visualization System (AVS5) for end-users. Many of these users sought the more advanced functionality found exclusively in AVS/Express, incorporated with ease-of-use features to make the product suitable for their use.

According to Jim Aucoin, AVS Product Manager, AVS/Express 3.0 answers that demand. "End-users have been eager to utilize the object-oriented architecture and wide array of visualization techniques found in AVS/Express to quickly and easily visualize their data. We can now offer them all of this capability coupled with the required ease-of-use. At the same time, we further address the needs of application developers by also giving them these same user-friendly features plus a host of new functions that will allow them to more easily and quickly produce complex, robust visualization applications. Advanced Visual Systems today meets the needs of both classes of users with a single, unified product family."

AVS/Express is used in a wide range of industries to bring visualization to applications in a fraction of the time required using traditional tools. Applied in medical imaging, oil and gas exploration, engineering analysis, geographic information systems (GIS), environmental studies, telecommunications, financial analysis, data mining and on-line analytical processing (OLAP), AVS/Express converts complex data into insightful 2D and 3D computer images that can be easily interpreted to gain understanding and competitive advantage.

For example, doctors use AVS/Express' 3D imaging methods to better detect and measure biochemical changes that occur in serious health conditions like epilepsy, and Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. Environmental researchers combine data from multiple monitoring sources into a single, multidimensional visualization that illustrates the relationship between water and air pollution and the ecosystem. A global banking firm uses AVS/Express to develop a 3D spatial rendering of mortgage buying and repayment trends.

Two editions share many new features

The AVS/Express 3.0 Visualization and Developer Editions both share features that increase the product's performance, ease-of-use, and reputation for offering the industry's broadest suite of visualization functionality. Key among these are:

-- An Add Module tool that significantly simplifies the process of writing new AVS/Express modules. The tool leads users through several dialogs to add methods and parameters, and then automatically creates a new module based on the input received.

-- A Data Import tool that facilitates the process of bringing a user's data into the AVS/Express environment. The tool guides the user through the process of creating a module to read a specific file format that can then be used to read any file with the given layout.

-- Numerous enhancements and performance improvements to the Graphics Display Kit for both 2D and 3D text and graphics rendering and viewing:

-- 3D accelerate mode support which significantly improves the performance of moving or animating objects by allowing the user to mark objects in a scene as either dynamic or static, so that as objects move through a scene only dynamic objects are re-rendered

-- Stroke text in 2D and 3D viewers to support multiple fonts, arbitrary rotation and scaling of text in 2D and 3D views, and easy control of 2D and 3D text characteristics and orientation

-- Frame buffer and Z-buffer I/O support for chaining of multiple rendering engines

-- An improved colormap editor

-- Object Jitter which removes artifacts associated with coincident objects, such as the tearing of surfaces and stitching of lines

Multiple enhancements, new visualization modules and end-user visualization techniques added to the Data Visualization Kit including:

-- Several new modules for use in visualizing multidimensional data

--New image read and write modules for TIFF, GIF, JPEG, PBM, BMP, SGI RGB and Sun Raster image formats

-- An enhanced image processing kit, which improves image display performance

-- A new GIS Library with a number of modules, data readers, mapping projections and user interface macros optimized for importing and manipulating geographic information system (GIS) components within the AVS/Express environment

-- An expanded Annotation and Graphing Kit , that includes implementation of polar charts in AVS/Express

-- A FORTRAN interface

Visualization Edition - broadly extended capabilities for end users

Advanced Visual Systems expects demand for the new Visualization Edition to come from both its existing AVS5 user base and a whole new group of visualization end users who will be attracted to the easier data visualization made possible by its object-oriented, "drag-and-drop" architecture. AVS/Express Visualization Edition includes over 50 new and enhanced visualization modules not found in its predecessor, AVS5. It also has an extensible, unified data model which will give end users much broader capabilities in defining their data in a structured, application-specific form. In addition, it has an integrated viewer that provides a unified approach to rendering text, images, and 2D and 3D geometries and volumes. AVS/Express Visualization Edition is also much more adept at supporting large data sets. Of equal importance to broadening the new end user community for AVS/Express 3.0 Visualization Edition is its support for PCs including Windows NT and Windows 95 user interfaces. This represents the first time Advanced Visual Systems has offered an end-user visualization environment for the desktop.

Advanced Visual Systems has also developed a set of new documents and tutorials to guide end users through their data visualization projects, including "Visualizing Your Data with AVS/Express," a project start-up guide, and "AVS/Express for AVS5 Users" to familiarize existing AVS5 customers with the AVS/Express environment. Both are available on-line and in the AVS/Express 3.0 manual set.

Developer Edition - Expanded capabilities for rapid development of robust visualization applications

In addition to all of the features and functionality found in the Visualization Edition, AVS/Express Developer Edition offers a broad array of functions specific to the rapid development of scientific, technical and commercial visualization applications and components for deployment within an organization or for resale.

The Developer Edition includes extended graphics and data libraries, and permits developers low-level access to system components to construct custom features specific to their application requirements, and to generate stand-alone applications, C++ class objects and OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) objects.

New features exclusive to AVS/Express 3.0 Developer Edition that extend this capability are:

-- Extensions to the Database Kit. Introduced in release 2.1 of AVS/Express, the Database Kit provides the developer with an interface between AVS/Express and relational database management systems to easily import data resident in these databases into the AVS/Express development environment. With release 3.0, the DataBase kit now fully supports RDBMS's from Oracle, Sybase and Informix as well as an Open Database

Connectivity (ODBC) interface

Support for OLE 2.0 (Object Linking and Embedding) the Microsoft-defined standard for inter-application communication in the Windows environment. AVS/Express 3.0 adds the capability to build OCX's (OLE custom controls) in order that AVS/Express visualization and user interface objects can be incorporated into applications that support OLE. AVS/Express can also be used as an OLE Automation server.

Pricing, availability, and platform support

AVS/Express 3.0 Visualization Edition pricing starts at $6,000 for UNIX-based systems and at $2,995 for Windows 95 and NT systems. AVS/Express 3.0 Developer Edition is priced at $25,000 for the first UNIX-based system and $6,000 for follow-on UNIX systems, and at $18,000 for the first Windows-based system, with follow-on Windows-based systems priced at $4,000. Volume and university discounts are available. Current AVS5 and AVS/Express 2.1 users on support contracts will be upgraded to AVS/Express 3.0 Visualization Edition and Developer Edition, respectively, free-of-charge. Both versions are available immediately. AVS/Express 3.0 supports a range of hardware platforms including all major UNIX workstations and Windows NT and Windows 95 systems. New or updated platforms specifically added in the new release include Microsoft Windows 95, Hewlett-Packard HPUX 10.10, Digital UNIX 3.2, SunOS 4.1.4 and 5.5, SGI IRIX 5.3 and 6.2, and IBM RS/6000 AIX 4.1.

Advanced Visual Systems

Advanced Visual Systems Inc. is the leading developer of "visual intelligence" software - interactive multidimensional visualization applications and development tools that transform large amounts of complex data into visual information. The Waltham-based firms visual intelligence products give competitive insight to customers in the medical imaging, oil and gas exploration, engineering analysis, geographic information systems (GIS), environmental studies, telecommunications, financial analysis, data mining and on-line analytical processing markets. -0-

AVS/Express is a registered trademark of Advanced Visual Systems Inc. All other trademarks mentioned are trademarks of their respective holders.

CONTACT: Jim Aucoin

Advanced Visual Systems, Inc.

617/890-4300 ext. 2124

[e-mail]

or

Glen Zimmerman

Beaupre & Co. Public Relations 

603/436-6690

[e-mail]