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Distributed Visualization System

Key Features…

Animation and virtual reality are becoming important techniques for visualizing and manipulating models without the cost of building expensive mock-ups or other real world solutions. Important applications of animation and virtual reality are in medicine, education and architecture, where they provide simple and inexpensive ways to visualize real world concepts- from operations of systems to MRI scan data.

Intensive interactive visualization of photo-realistic 3D images has only been achievable with the use of high-powered supercomputers. Such images cannot be generated by the average single PC due to speed limitations of a single processor when using techniques such as ray tracing, physically-correct lighting models, large textures, shadows, reflections, refraction of light, and volumetric (3D) data sets. Hardware 3D acceleration solutions exist for PCs, but these use image-generation techniques that are optimized for speed and not accuracy.

The high cost of using realistic techniques is due to the large multiprocessor architecture of high-end computers. These computers typically contain 16 or more microprocessors. The cost of these machines can increase geometrically with each additional processor, resulting in systems costing tens of thousands to millions of dollars. This has made such computer generated imaging techniques expensive and their potential has not been fully exploited.

TRLabs has developed a software package - the Distributed Visualization System (DVS) - that enables users to visualize real-time interactive 3D models using a network of average PCs with techniques that would normally require the processing power of high-end workstations or supercomputers. The system provides high-quality imagery with smooth motion and low latency.

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