Visualization 2003 Readers’ Choice Award Winner: IDL
IDL, the Interactive Data Language, is software for visualization, data analysis and cross-platform application development. It is specifically designed for visualizing large and complex datasets. Users can create powerful visualizations, including simple 2-D plots and image displays, interactive 3-D graphics designed to take advantage of OpenGL hardware acceleration and volume displays designed to take advantage of multiple processors for rapid rendering. Features include a library of built-in image processing, math, statistics, and analysis routines; an array-oriented interpreted language; support for virtually every data format, type and size; and the flexibility to choose from two different graphics subsystems depending on need — Direct Graphics and Object Graphics.
