SCEC VDO

SCEC Virtual Display of Objects (SCEC VDO)

Researchers and interns at the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) have built a seismic data visualization software tool called the SCEC Virtual Display of Objects (SCEC-VDO). Written in Java with the Swing GUI toolkit to create interactive menus and the Visualization Toolkit (VTK) to render 3D content, SCEC-VDO allows for the visualization of 3D earthquake and fault objects on maps and the creation of images and movies for analysis, presentation, and publication.

View source code on GitHub

Releases

v24.11.0

Info

• Precompile bytecode with Ant for improved start-time performance
• Transition to DMG, EXE, and tarballs for macOS, Windows, and Linux respectively
• macOS and Windows installers properly install an application for easier updates
• Linux tarball doesn't install to system itself, but now bundles dependencies

Downloads

• Linux: SCEC-VDO-24.11.0.tar.gz (435 MB) (MD5: 2a76884bed6b008ca06c46cd035e8414)
• macOS Intel: SCEC-VDO-24.11.0-Intel.dmg (501 MB) (MD5: 91771caaa998c3f3cf1a439521a5bd5e)
• macOS AppleSilicon: SCEC-VDO-24.11.0-AppleSilicon.dmg (552 MB) (MD5: 3321cd9cbb7327c3dcbcdba7a45ef890)
• Windows: SCEC-VDO-24.11.0.exe (283 MB) (MD5: d43c66a4e51182e04e70a12c103d32b2)

v24.10.0

Info

• Added support for Apple Silicon Macs
• Create Windows batch launcher
• Upgraded all platforms to VTK9.1
• Bundled OpenJDK 23+37, OpenJ9 0.47.0

Downloads

• Linux: v24.10.0/scec-vdo-linux.zip (532 MB) (MD5: 03fb57593ae33d9b475799d0d153b6b2)
• macOS: v24.10.0/scec-vdo-mac-osx.zip (516 MB) (MD5: 9e4c9a8592baf574a8e9bfac5b8a07fb)
• Windows: v24.10.0/scec-vdo-windows.zip (390 MB) (MD5: 9aeb73faebcd154d850d58ba86638e3e)

Troubleshooting

v24.11.0 macOS

When attempting to run the SCEC-VDO application on macOS for the first time, you may encounter an error pop-up message that the application cannot be opened. This is likely due to the application not being signed by a trusted developer.

v24.11.0 macOS "cannot be opened" error

Right-click the application and press "Open" for the first time opening the app. This should prompt you to bypass Apple's malicious software / unverified developer warnings.

v24.10.0 macOS

As of SCEC-VDO v24.10.0, the macOS application is bundled as a zip file instead of an app file. macOS GateKeeper refuses to execute applications bundled this way by default, regardless of codesigning. We'll consider bundling a proper macOS app instead of a zip file as a permanent solution.

v24.10.0 macOS "java cannot be opened" error

v24.10.0 macOS app will not run because it's bundled as a zip file

Unauthorized applications cannot be directly executed in the Terminal or opened by double-clicking without making a GateKeeper exception. This is a very simple, one time process that should not take longer than a minute.

To create a security exception, you need to enable Developer Tools and allow the Terminal permission to bypass the system security policy. Enable Developer Tools by running spctl developer-mode enable-terminal and quitting the Terminal. Then navigate to Developer Tools inside System Settings, enable the Terminal to bypass security, and try running the SCEC-VDO application.

I've created video demonstrations showing exactly how to do this.

Intel Mac Demo (1:11)

File:Intel Mac 4GB SCEC-VDO Demo.mp4

M1 Mac Demo (1:37)

File:M1 Mac 8GB SCEC-VDO Demo.mp4

v24.10.0 Linux

For our Linux users, the launch_linux.sh script installs the dependency freeglut3-dev using the Aptitude package manager. For users of non-Debian based distributions, you must install an equivalent with your package manager or compile from source.