Interactive Modeling in High-performance Scientific Visualization - the VIS-A-VIS Project

Scientific visualization is the technology to deal with and extract meaning from complex and huge data sets. Visualization has many aspects and there are several steps incorporated in the visualization process: a data interface or a direct process communication link from the visualization system to the application has to be stablished. Modeling is the task to configure and apply data transfer functions to transform the application data gradually to their final output representation - images and/or other perceptible information. Interactivity plays an essential role in the visualization analysis cycle to investigate the data of interest. For this purpose a high-performance rendering system is obligatory to guarantee short interaction response times. Integration of volume and polygonal object representations in a hybrid rendering system is an additional required feature of a rendering system in visualization. The VIS-A-VIS system provides toolkit-like library functions as a platform to r ealize high-performance interactive visualization applications. The ISVAS system is an example how to apply the toolkit in an application. (IGD