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Review of Visualisation Systems
1.1 Introduction
One of the responsibilities of the UK Advisory Group on Computer Graphics (AGOCG) is to stimulate and support the effective use of computer-based visualization.
AGOCG therefore requested DRAL Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and the Universities of Leeds and Manchester and NERC Computing Services (Keyworth) to conduct a review of visualization software, to help potential and actual users make effective choices.
AGOCG conducted a previous evaluation of visualization software [15] and the Stichting Academisch Rekencentrum Amsterdam have also produced an evaluation report [10]. At that time, AVS was already becoming available on many workstations, IRIS Explorer and IBM Data Explorer were quite new, Khoros was available free but was restricted to handling images, and apE was undergoing a difficult transition.
One consequence of that evaluation was that AVS was made available to universities and other HEI's by CHEST on favourable site terms.
Why revisit this work after what is a comparatively short time? There are several reasons:
- Revisiting this work was envisaged at the time as it was realised that IRIS Explorer and IBM Data Explorer were new in 1991/2 and it was not possible to evaluate them effectively.
- Since that evaluation IRIS Explorer is now developed and supported by a UK company (NAG Ltd.), moreover a company with strong links with the UK academic community.
- Interest in PV-WAVE has grown in that time. This system is general purpose but at the same time its command language system provides an interesting contrast to the other systems which are in general of the data-flow type.
- Since that evaluation, AVS Inc has taken over the UNIRAS company - which means that CHEST deals with these two distinct companies are now with only one.
The purpose of the work is therefore to review the current market for visualization software as it exists in the UK and to provide information to the UK Academic community for its visualization needs. There are many potential systems and the review had to narrow the field.
The review does not include basic plotting systems. These are already understood in the community. Thus any system under review had to at least treat 3D data adequately. Therefore there had to be:
- good, interactive support for viewing 3D geometry, taking advantage of 3D graphics hardware now widely available to accelerate 3D viewing
- good support for visualizing 3D data - (a common pitfall here is the often quoted 3D plot, which is often a plot of z=f(x,y) a single valued function of 2 variables which we would therefore regard as 2D data)
- The system under review must be general purpose and extensible
Review of Visualisation Systems
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Virtual Environments Visualisation
Contents
