next up previous contents
Next: System requirements and goals Up: Implementation: DynSys3D Previous: Implementation: DynSys3D


Introduction

DynSys3D [45] is a flexible environment for implementing and evaluating new ideas in the field of advanced visualization techniques with special emphasis on three-dimensional dynamical systems. For design and implementation of DynSys3D knowledge gained from previous projects (VEGA [82], BaBel [81]) was used. Starting with some specific requirements and goals (see Section 8.2) the system design of DynSys3D (see Sections 8.3 and 8.4) was chosen to comply with most of these goals. DynSys3D provides an experimental workbench to easily investigate visualization techniques and dynamical systems in a collaborative environment.

When starting in a new field of research the question of where to embed the test implementation is very important. Especially in the field of visualization this question is crucial, since implementing the whole visualization pipeline [60] is clearly not practicable or desirable in most situations. In the case of this thesis it was decided to implement and test new visualization techniques in the field of three-dimensional dynamical systems on the basis of AVS [2].

AVS is a general-purpose environment for developing and compositing visualization techniques. Applications are thereby realized as a set of modules (elementary tasks in the visualization process), which are connected to form a data-flow network by associating output and input ports of consecutive modules.

AVS modules contain easy to specify user-interface components. Apart from a large set of predefined modules [3], user defined modules may be implemented. As long as the data of a user-defined module, which is handed over to AVS, conforms to standard AVS data structures, these modules can be easily combined with already existing ones. The availability of many visualization techniques within AVS led us to choose AVS as the basis for DynSys3D.


next up previous contents
Next: System requirements and goals Up: Implementation: DynSys3D Previous: Implementation: DynSys3D
Helwig Löffelmann, November 1998,
mailto:helwig@cg.tuwien.ac.at.