Integrating Scientific Visualization into Studierstube Workspace 

Project duration:1999-2000 
Contact: Clemens Pecinovsky		 
Description
 This is the Version 2 of the AVS to Studierstube Interface. With this system multiple researchers are able to collaborate on the analysis of complex systems such as Dynamical Systems, Simulations and complex Data, short for every scientific visualization application. 
Application
 Scientific visualization is an important tool for scientists to deal with very hard problems that often exceed the limits of imagination. Real-time exploration of visualization problems using augmented reality allows to rapidly examine many aspects of the problem and leads to faster understanding. The system can also be used for discussions and as a new presentation medium for such sientific visualization applications.
Integration of an existing desktop visualization system - AVS - was desired, because many data sets and visualization tools are already available on this platform.		 
Features
  • integration of an existing desktop visualization system
  • decoupled simulation
  • interaction elements on PIP and in 3D Windows
  • userinterface spezification at runtime
  • multi user
  • multi context
  • multi applications
  • implementation as Studierstube Workspace applikation
  • platform independence (tested on IRIX and WindowsNT)
  • scaleability
  • storable states
 
Implementation
 A Studierstube workspace application was implemented to communicate with AVS as an existing desktop visualization system via a dedicated network interface. While a tighly coupled real-time display loop was provided for rapid visual feedback, a separate communication loop between Studierstube and AVS was used for sending steering commands to AVS and computed geometry back to Studierstube (decoupled simulation).  The workspace application called display server is running under both operating systems of the Studierstube workspace IRIX and Windows NT (platform independence). It is possible to make more than one AVS connection to the display server and due to tha fact that the display server is a workspace application it is possible to launch other workspace applications like the calulator while the display server is running.
The user interaction is split into widgets placed on the PIP and interactionelements like points, lines and polylines placed direct in the 3D window where the computed AVS Geometry is shown. These interactionelements can be spezified with the new implemented AVS modules at runtime and the state of these interactionelements can be stored by writing the AVS network. 
The systems suppurts multi user in both parts, the interaction part where every interactionelement can be assigned to a speziefied group of users, and in the part of the shown geometry in the window, where every user can be assigned diffent geometry parts (multi context).
Scaleability was met with the use of simple and well documented interfaces, a decoupled and therefore simply replaceable networkinterface and the modular structured display server with C++ classes.		 
Download
Adobe Acrobat Document 441kB Master Thesis (german)
(Adobe Acrobat file 877kB)
Adobe Acrobat Document 623kB user manual (german)
(Adobe Acrobat file 154kB)		 
 see also

Screen shots

    
 The interactionelements like sliders,dials and buttons can be grouped to garantee a clear user interface design.

    
Standard AVS-Hummer example, exploring 3D Data with Isosurfaces in the Studierstube.

    
Exploring 3D Dynamical Systems with DynSys3D through the Studierstube interface.
 


This page is maintained by Clemens Pecinovsky. It was last updated on May 25, 2000.
If you have any comments, please send a message to peci@cg.tuwien.ac.at.