Brown Cave Software History - Revision history

Andrew Forsberg: /* Recommendation for 2009 and into the future */

2009-01-13T21:56:12Z

Recommendation for 2009 and into the future

← Older revision		Revision as of 21:56, 13 January 2009
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	There are three softwares Brown should use:		There are three softwares Brown should use:

	1) For general scientific visualization, Amira is a solid system (http://www.		1) For general scientific visualization, Amira appears to be a solid system (http://www.amiravis.com/) for new Cave users of all disciplines.
	~~Brown should use a commercially supported software~~ for ~~general scientific visualization~~

			ParaView (http://www.paraview.org/) is another good option, but it has very limited support for immersive virtual reality. With funding from DOE Brown and LANL worked on investigating a IVR-version of ParaView, but it is incomplete. However, ParaView may have a role for desktop scientific visualization and is in use by some scientists at Brown University today.

			2) XVR (http://www.vrmedia.it/) is a good and free software for visual simulation

			3) VRG3D is recommended for researchers doing advanced visualization and interaction research not supported by Amira or XVR.

	VRG3D is currently the suggested toolkit for advanced research in visualization and user interaction.		VRG3D is currently the suggested toolkit for advanced research in visualization and user interaction.

Andrew Forsberg: /* Recommendation for 2009 and into the future */

2009-01-13T21:52:29Z

Recommendation for 2009 and into the future

← Older revision		Revision as of 21:52, 13 January 2009
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	== Recommendation for 2009 and into the future ==		== Recommendation for 2009 and into the future ==

			There are three softwares Brown should use:

			1) For general scientific visualization, Amira is a solid system (http://www.
			Brown should use a commercially supported software for general scientific visualization


	VRG3D is currently the suggested toolkit for advanced research in visualization and user interaction.		VRG3D is currently the suggested toolkit for advanced research in visualization and user interaction.

Andrew Forsberg: /* Recommendation */

2009-01-13T21:51:24Z

Recommendation

← Older revision		Revision as of 21:51, 13 January 2009
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	##Cons:More documentation is needed for the "VR" extensions to G3D. Testing and tuning of the toolkit is needed.		##Cons:More documentation is needed for the "VR" extensions to G3D. Testing and tuning of the toolkit is needed.

	== Recommendation ==		== Recommendation for 2009 and into the future ==

	VRG3D is currently the suggested toolkit for advanced research in visualization and user interaction.		VRG3D is currently the suggested toolkit for advanced research in visualization and user interaction.

Andrew Forsberg at 21:51, 13 January 2009

2009-01-13T21:51:09Z

@@ Line 15: / Line 15: @@
 ##Pros: Juergen Schulze used this for some applications at Brown during his time as a post-doc here.  It provides a scenegraph which is helpful for some tasks.
 ##Cons: It cannot drive a Cave, but Juergen used it with Brown's "Inspace-2.0" (see below) to develop "CaveVOX".
 == Brown-built software ==
@@ Line 20: / Line 23: @@
 ##Pros: This was the first software we used to drive the IBM cluster we used in 1998.  Dmitri Lemmerman did much of the work on it.  It was developed in parallel to Chromium and some of the other solutions to driving graphics clusters.  It worked by using an interposed OpenGL library to capture OpenGL calls and distribute them with MPI to the nodes of the cluster.  I believe some special additional commands were used to handle setting up a viewpoint for a Cave-like display.
 ##Cons: DOGL fell out of use because of its complexity and need for maintenance.
-#Inspace-2.0 - http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.10.6599
+#Jot
-##Pros:
+##Pros:Jot made use of some of Brown's pre-Cave 3D graphics and application framework designed for user interaction and visualization research.  It was meant to be a modular system and originally ran on our Sun workstations, but also ran on SGIs and ibms, and later linux machines.  Parts of it became "gluebase" which is in the Brown $G software repository and includes several low-level packages including a math library, networking code, device input, and an FSA-based interaction model.
-##Cons:
+##Cons:It wasn't well documented and users found it hard to use.  This problem led to a move to $G and eventually "inspace-2.0" which was the next heavily used software framework for Cave development.
 == Recommendation ==

Andrew Forsberg at 21:28, 13 January 2009

2009-01-13T21:28:38Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 21:28, 13 January 2009
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	== Brown-built software ==		== Brown-built software ==
			#DOGL (Distributed OpenGL)
			##Pros: This was the first software we used to drive the IBM cluster we used in 1998. Dmitri Lemmerman did much of the work on it. It was developed in parallel to Chromium and some of the other solutions to driving graphics clusters. It worked by using an interposed OpenGL library to capture OpenGL calls and distribute them with MPI to the nodes of the cluster. I believe some special additional commands were used to handle setting up a viewpoint for a Cave-like display.
			##Cons: DOGL fell out of use because of its complexity and need for maintenance.
			#Inspace-2.0 - http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.10.6599
			##Pros:
			##Cons:

	== Recommendation ==		== Recommendation ==

Andrew Forsberg at 21:24, 13 January 2009

2009-01-13T21:24:10Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 21:24, 13 January 2009
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	##'''Pros''': This was the first software we used to drive the Brown Cave when it was installed in 1998. World Toolkit had lots of documentation. It handled synchronization of driving 4 displays in our 1998 Cave. It supported semi-sophisticated graphics such as alpha values and through some mechanism we never understood (though would have liked to) would draw semi-transparent geometries correctly-- normally, semi-transparent geometries are tricky technically to draw because you have to sort geometry back to front. It was scenegraph-based which sometimes was useful and sometimes was a hassle. It could import a variety of CAD models which was useful for some applications like Petra. Artery and Petra ran on WTK, plus some smaller applications. An early version of CavePainting may have run on WTK.		##'''Pros''': This was the first software we used to drive the Brown Cave when it was installed in 1998. World Toolkit had lots of documentation. It handled synchronization of driving 4 displays in our 1998 Cave. It supported semi-sophisticated graphics such as alpha values and through some mechanism we never understood (though would have liked to) would draw semi-transparent geometries correctly-- normally, semi-transparent geometries are tricky technically to draw because you have to sort geometry back to front. It was scenegraph-based which sometimes was useful and sometimes was a hassle. It could import a variety of CAD models which was useful for some applications like Petra. Artery and Petra ran on WTK, plus some smaller applications. An early version of CavePainting may have run on WTK.
	##'''Cons''': Some visualization ideas we had we could not implement because WTK did not let us control enough of the rendering engine. It went out of business. There wasn't good support for linux at first, and when we moved from SGI to linux graphics computers it wasn't easy to port applications like Artery and Petra.		##'''Cons''': Some visualization ideas we had we could not implement because WTK did not let us control enough of the rendering engine. It went out of business. There wasn't good support for linux at first, and when we moved from SGI to linux graphics computers it wasn't easy to port applications like Artery and Petra.
	#Ensight Gold		#Ensight Gold (http://www.ensight.com/ensight-gold.html)
	##Pros:		##Pros: DOE uses this commercial software for visualization at desktops and Caves. LANL in particular uses it for Cave visualization. It is a very high-quality and powerful scientific visualization software.
	##Cons:		##Cons:Its support for Caves is limited, though, providing: stereo rendering, cluster-graphics support, and a heads-up-display containing a small user-defined subset of its total functionality configured in a text file. No head-tracking is provided. The code is not available for extension/modification.
			#VRJuggler (http://www.vrjuggler.org/)
			##Pros: University of Iowa has developed and supported this software for many years. It has extensive documentation online and runs on multiple platforms.
			##Cons: In our experience, it has grown to a large size that makes doing simple things hard. We have found most people want a small stepping stone from OpenGL/Cg to Cave-development and that VR Juggler is too big a step that overwhelms developers.
			#OpenScenegraph
			##Pros: Juergen Schulze used this for some applications at Brown during his time as a post-doc here. It provides a scenegraph which is helpful for some tasks.
			##Cons: It cannot drive a Cave, but Juergen used it with Brown's "Inspace-2.0" (see below) to develop "CaveVOX".

	== Brown-built software ==		== Brown-built software ==

	== Recommendation ==		== Recommendation ==

Andrew Forsberg: /* 3rd party software */

2009-01-13T20:31:14Z

3rd party software

← Older revision		Revision as of 20:31, 13 January 2009
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	#World Toolkit		#World Toolkit
	##'''Pros''': World Toolkit had lots of documentation. It handled synchronization of driving 4 displays in our 1998 Cave. It supported semi-sophisticated graphics such as alpha values and through some mechanism we never understood (though would have liked to) would draw semi-transparent geometries correctly-- normally, semi-transparent geometries are tricky technically to draw because you have to sort geometry back to front. It was scenegraph-based which sometimes was useful and sometimes was a hassle. It could import a variety of CAD models which was useful for some applications like Petra. Artery and Petra ran on WTK, plus some smaller applications. An early version of CavePainting may have run on WTK.		##'''Pros''': This was the first software we used to drive the Brown Cave when it was installed in 1998. World Toolkit had lots of documentation. It handled synchronization of driving 4 displays in our 1998 Cave. It supported semi-sophisticated graphics such as alpha values and through some mechanism we never understood (though would have liked to) would draw semi-transparent geometries correctly-- normally, semi-transparent geometries are tricky technically to draw because you have to sort geometry back to front. It was scenegraph-based which sometimes was useful and sometimes was a hassle. It could import a variety of CAD models which was useful for some applications like Petra. Artery and Petra ran on WTK, plus some smaller applications. An early version of CavePainting may have run on WTK.
	##'''Cons''': Some visualization ideas we had we could not implement because WTK did not let us control enough of the rendering engine. It went out of business. There wasn't good support for linux at first, and when we moved from SGI to linux graphics computers it wasn't easy to port applications like Artery and Petra.		##'''Cons''': Some visualization ideas we had we could not implement because WTK did not let us control enough of the rendering engine. It went out of business. There wasn't good support for linux at first, and when we moved from SGI to linux graphics computers it wasn't easy to port applications like Artery and Petra.
	#Ensight Gold		#Ensight Gold

Andrew Forsberg: /* 3rd party software */

2009-01-13T20:30:47Z

3rd party software

← Older revision		Revision as of 20:30, 13 January 2009
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	#World Toolkit		#World Toolkit
	##'''Pros''': World Toolkit had lots of documentation. It handled synchronization of driving 4 displays in our 1998 Cave. It supported semi-sophisticated graphics such as alpha values and through some mechanism we never understood (though would have liked to) would draw semi-transparent geometries correctly-- normally, semi-transparent geometries are tricky technically to draw because you have to sort geometry back to front. It was scenegraph-based which sometimes was useful and sometimes was a hassle. It could import a variety of CAD models which was useful for some applications like Petra. Artery and Petra ran on WTK, plus some smaller applications. An early version of CavePainting may have run on WTK.		##'''Pros''': World Toolkit had lots of documentation. It handled synchronization of driving 4 displays in our 1998 Cave. It supported semi-sophisticated graphics such as alpha values and through some mechanism we never understood (though would have liked to) would draw semi-transparent geometries correctly-- normally, semi-transparent geometries are tricky technically to draw because you have to sort geometry back to front. It was scenegraph-based which sometimes was useful and sometimes was a hassle. It could import a variety of CAD models which was useful for some applications like Petra. Artery and Petra ran on WTK, plus some smaller applications. An early version of CavePainting may have run on WTK.

	##'''Cons''': Some visualization ideas we had we could not implement because WTK did not let us control enough of the rendering engine. It went out of business. There wasn't good support for linux at first, and when we moved from SGI to linux graphics computers it wasn't easy to port applications like Artery and Petra.		##'''Cons''': Some visualization ideas we had we could not implement because WTK did not let us control enough of the rendering engine. It went out of business. There wasn't good support for linux at first, and when we moved from SGI to linux graphics computers it wasn't easy to port applications like Artery and Petra.
	#Ensight Gold		#Ensight Gold

Andrew Forsberg: /* 3rd party software */

2009-01-13T20:30:41Z

3rd party software

← Older revision		Revision as of 20:30, 13 January 2009
Line 4:		Line 4:

	#World Toolkit		#World Toolkit
	##'''Pros''': World Toolkit had lots of documentation. It handled synchronization of driving 4 displays in our 1998 Cave. It supported semi-sophisticated graphics such as alpha values and through some mechanism we never understood (though would have liked to) would draw semi-transparent geometries correctly-- normally, semi-transparent geometries are tricky technically to draw because you have to sort geometry back to front. It was scenegraph-based which sometimes was useful and sometimes was a hassle. It could import a variety of CAD models which was useful for some applications like Petra.		##'''Pros''': World Toolkit had lots of documentation. It handled synchronization of driving 4 displays in our 1998 Cave. It supported semi-sophisticated graphics such as alpha values and through some mechanism we never understood (though would have liked to) would draw semi-transparent geometries correctly-- normally, semi-transparent geometries are tricky technically to draw because you have to sort geometry back to front. It was scenegraph-based which sometimes was useful and sometimes was a hassle. It could import a variety of CAD models which was useful for some applications like Petra. Artery and Petra ran on WTK, plus some smaller applications. An early version of CavePainting may have run on WTK.

	Artery and Petra ran on WTK, plus some smaller applications. An early version of CavePainting may have run on WTK.

	##'''Cons''': Some visualization ideas we had we could not implement because WTK did not let us control enough of the rendering engine. It went out of business. There wasn't good support for linux at first, and when we moved from SGI to linux graphics computers it wasn't easy to port applications like Artery and Petra.		##'''Cons''': Some visualization ideas we had we could not implement because WTK did not let us control enough of the rendering engine. It went out of business. There wasn't good support for linux at first, and when we moved from SGI to linux graphics computers it wasn't easy to port applications like Artery and Petra.

Andrew Forsberg: /* 3rd party software */

2009-01-13T20:30:32Z

3rd party software

← Older revision		Revision as of 20:30, 13 January 2009
Line 4:		Line 4:

	#World Toolkit		#World Toolkit
	##Pros:		##'''Pros''': World Toolkit had lots of documentation. It handled synchronization of driving 4 displays in our 1998 Cave. It supported semi-sophisticated graphics such as alpha values and through some mechanism we never understood (though would have liked to) would draw semi-transparent geometries correctly-- normally, semi-transparent geometries are tricky technically to draw because you have to sort geometry back to front. It was scenegraph-based which sometimes was useful and sometimes was a hassle. It could import a variety of CAD models which was useful for some applications like Petra.
	World Toolkit had lots of documentation. It handled synchronization of driving 4 displays in our 1998 Cave. It supported semi-sophisticated graphics such as alpha values and through some mechanism we never understood (though would have liked to) would draw semi-transparent geometries correctly-- normally, semi-transparent geometries are tricky technically to draw because you have to sort geometry back to front. It was scenegraph-based which sometimes was useful and sometimes was a hassle. It could import a variety of CAD models which was useful for some applications like Petra.

	Artery and Petra ran on WTK, plus some smaller applications. An early version of CavePainting may have run on WTK.		Artery and Petra ran on WTK, plus some smaller applications. An early version of CavePainting may have run on WTK.

	##Cons: Some visualization ideas we had we could not implement because WTK did not let us control enough of the rendering engine. It went out of business. There wasn't good support for linux at first, and when we moved from SGI to linux graphics computers it wasn't easy to port applications like Artery and Petra.		##'''Cons''': Some visualization ideas we had we could not implement because WTK did not let us control enough of the rendering engine. It went out of business. There wasn't good support for linux at first, and when we moved from SGI to linux graphics computers it wasn't easy to port applications like Artery and Petra.
	#Ensight Gold		#Ensight Gold
	##Pros:		##Pros: