ReVisE: Remote visualization environment for large numerical simulation datasets.

Stepan Orlov,Vladislav Kiev,Egor Usik,Alexey Zhuravlev,Vyacheslav Reshetnikov,Alexey Kuzin,Andrey Pyatlin,Frederique Lisacek

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0255030

Stepan Orlov, Vladislav Kiev + Show 6 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255030

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Abstract

The paper presents a new open-source visualization system, named ReVisE, aimed to provide interactive visualization of large datasets, which are results of complex numerical simulations. These datasets are hosted on a remote server or a supercomputer. The design of the system is briefly described. Dataset representation, proposed for interactive visualization and implemented in the system, is discussed. The effectiveness of our approach is confirmed by results of performance measurements on test and real-life large datasets. A comparison with other visualization systems is presented. Future plans of system development are outlined.

Highlights

Today’s supercomputers are often used for numerical simulations of complex problems, such as aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, oil flow through porous media, and many others
In this paper we address the problem of interactive visualization of large datasets resulting from complex simulations
Further we describe the core technology in the basis of our approach to making interactivity possible even for visualizing large datasets, and the ReVisE system built on top of it

Summary

Introduction

Today’s supercomputers are often used for numerical simulations of complex problems, such as aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, oil flow through porous media, and many others. Simulation results are represented by quite large datasets, especially in the case of unsteady problems, since the time adds one more dimension. In this paper we address the problem of interactive visualization of large datasets resulting from complex simulations. Our contribution to the problem solution is software implementation of a new open-source visualization system, named ReVisE (Remote Visualization Environment), available at https://github.com/deadmorous/revise. The motivation behind the idea to create yet another visualization system is basically that existing widely used systems have serious performance issues, making truly interactive visualization only possible for relatively small datasets (up to 106 nodes). Systems for visualizing large datasets exist, e.g., NVIDIA IndeX (https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-index) and Sight [1], those are not widely used, in particular, due to their limited availability

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