Illustrative Visualization of Molecular Reactions using Omniscient Intelligence and Passive Agents

Figure 1: Demonstration of our system capabilities from three different zooming levels (left to right). We showcase a scene containing 106 diffusing and reacting molecules in real-time at 30 FPS. In this paper we propose a new type of a particle systems, tailored for illustrative visualization purposes, in partic-ular for visualizing molecular reactions in biological networks. Previous visualizations of biochemical processes were exploiting the results of agent-based modeling. Such modeling aims at reproducing accurately the stochastic nature of molecular interactions. However, it is impossible to expect events of interest happening at a certain time and location, which is impractical for storytelling. To obtain the means of controlling molecular interactions, we propose to govern passive agents with an omniscient intelligence, instead of giving to the agents the freedom of initiating reaction autonomously. This makes it possible to generate illustrative animated stories that communi-cate the functioning of the molecular machinery. The rendering performance delivers for interactive framerates of massive amounts of data, based on the dynamic tessellation capabilities of modern graphics cards. Finally, we report an informal expert feedback we obtained from the potential users.