At the end of 2014 we analysed a Visualisation Tools survey for certain HPC and computational users.

The results from over 100 respondents are being edited at:
http://www.vizmatters.cs.manchester.ac.uk/

Executive summary states; for the global survey there were seven key outcome results that can be acted upon:

• Three packages are the most-used packages by 26% of respondents. Conversely, another 31 packages are used by one or two users and account for a further 26% of respondents.
• Producing publication quality plots is the most-used technique.
  However, the features making these packages the favourites are:
  – Software that is written specifically for their domain of interest.
  – Large datasets are handled efficiently.
  – Scripting or other ability to extend the tool is required.
• Users second most favoured packages are general purpose visualisation tools.
• Users were given five options for selecting their most required development. None emerged as being more needed than the others.
• Conversely, large amounts of memory was clearly the most important requirement for high performance visualisation.
• The main future challenges are suggested to be
  – The ability to handle large amounts of data
  – The ability to operate in a distributed environment.

A series of further surveys and follow-up questions are planned as well as afull review next October (2015).