A Survey of Software Frameworks for Cluster-Based Large High-Resolution Displays

Abstract—Large high-resolution displays (LHRD) enable visualization of extremely large-scale data sets with high resolution, large physical size, scalable rendering performance, advanced interaction methods, and collaboration. Despite the advantages, applications for LHRD can be developed only by a select group of researchers and programmers, since its software implementation requires design and development paradigms different from typical desktop environments. It is critical for developers to understand and take advantage of appropriate software tools and methods for developing their LHRD applications. In this paper, we present a survey of the state-of-the-art software frameworks and applications for cluster-based LHRD, highlighting a three-aspect taxonomy. This survey can aid LHRD application and framework developers in choosing more suitable development techniques and software environments for new LHRD applications, and guide LHRD researchers to open needs in LHRD software frameworks. Index Terms—Large high-resolution display, tiled displays, distributed rendering, parallel rendering, distributed applications, graphics api