Visual Computing in the Future: Computer Graphics as a Remote Service

The focus of Visual Computinghas changedquite dramaticallyover the past few decades. Previouslyour concernwaswith very low level algorithmsbut we have progressedbeyondmuchof this to tacklenew issues.Many of theproblemspresentedin VisualComputinghave dealtwith thegeneralproblemof not beingableto displaya datasetfastenough,or evenat all. The first solutionsto this have beenlabeledwith thenow ubiquitousterm“big iron.” Supercomputers providedtheonly solutionfor a long time but they wereexpensi ve. We have now reachedthepoint wherecommodity graphicshardwareimprovementrival whatmany supercomputers weredesignedto do. As a result,thetrendis moving towardcommoditybasedclustersasa solutionto big dataconstraints,providing a cost-efective alternati ve that is challengingthe market for supercomputers. Anotherresultof thegrowing sizeof datasetsis thatwe needto developnew displaysto view them;theresolutionof a typical desktopdisplayis not adequatefor viewing theextremedetailwecannow incorporateinto models.Because of this, display walls using tiled projectorsand specializedhigh-resolutiondisplays haveemerged.Of course,aswecontinueto find solutionsto problemslike these,new onesarisethatmustbeaddressed. Oneof the main issueswe seein Visual Computingtoday is the tight coupling of the graphicshardwareand its display. It is very difficult to view the resultsof a graphicallyintenseapplicationfrom a different location. Many applicationsrequire therenderingpower of a clusteror supercomputer , but oneisn’t alwaysavailable. To view an application,a specializedvisualizationcentermay be needed.The problem is that the displaymustbe locatedin closevicinity to the clusteror supercomputer controlling it. Sincemostpeoplewon’t have eitherof thesein their office their work needsto bedoneelsewhere.Thiscanpresentaconsiderableinconvenience,especially if the systemisn’t locatedin the samebuilding. Imaginea scenariowhereyou only wantto view a minutepartof a dataset, maybefor referencewhenwriting a paper , but you don’t needto usea displaywall. It wouldbeverybeneficialto beableto do soat

[1]  Andy Hopper,et al.  Teleporting in an X Window System Environment , 1994 .

[2]  Georges G. Grinstein,et al.  The X window system , 1988, SIGGRAPH '88.

[3]  Carolina Cruz-Neira,et al.  Surround-Screen Projection-Based Virtual Reality: The Design and Implementation of the CAVE , 2023 .

[4]  John S. Montrym,et al.  InfiniteReality: a real-time graphics system , 1997, SIGGRAPH.

[5]  Andy Hopper,et al.  A ubiquitous, personalized computing environment for all: Teleporting in an X Window System Environment , 1994, IEEE Personal Communications.

[6]  Christopher O. Jaynes,et al.  Monitoring and Correction of Geometric Distortion in Projected Displays , 2002, WSCG.

[7]  Tosiyasu L. Kunii,et al.  VC-1: a scalable graphics computer with virtual local frame buffers , 1996, SIGGRAPH.

[8]  Thomas Funkhouser,et al.  Sort-First Parallel Rendering with a Cluster of PCs , 2000 .

[9]  Mark Weiser.  The computer for the 21st century , 1991 .

[10]  Greg Welch,et al.  Working in the Office of "Real Soon Now" , 2000, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.

[11]  Terry Winograd,et al.  Fluid interaction with high-resolution wall-size displays , 2001, UIST '01.

[12]  Andy Hopper,et al.  Virtual Network Computing , 1998, IEEE Internet Comput..

[13]  Randall Frank,et al.  High-Resolution Multiprojector Display Walls , 2000, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.

[14]  Henry Fuchs,et al.  A sorting classification of parallel rendering , 1994, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.

[15]  Greg Welch,et al.  The office of the future: a unified approach to image-based modeling and spatially immersive displays , 1998, SIGGRAPH.

[16]  Pat Hanrahan,et al.  Distributed Rendering for Scalable Displays , 2000, ACM/IEEE SC 2000 Conference (SC'00).

[17]  Anselmo Lastra,et al.  PixelFlow: the realization , 1997, HWWS '97.

[18]  Adam Finkelstein,et al.  Building and Using A Scalable Display Wall System , 2000, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.

[19]  Edward O. Thorp,et al.  The invention of the first wearable computer , 1998, Digest of Papers. Second International Symposium on Wearable Computers (Cat. No.98EX215).

[20]  Mark J. Kilgard,et al.  The OpenGL Utility Toolkit (GLUT) Programming Interface , 1999 .

[21]  P. Hanrahan,et al.  The Event Heap : An Enabling Infrastructure for Interactive Workspaces , 2000 .

[22]  Homan Igehy,et al.  The design of a parallel graphics interface , 1998, SIGGRAPH.

[23]  Tristan Richardson.  Teleporting - Mobile X Sessions , 1995 .

[24]  Ruigang Yang,et al.  PixelFlex: a reconfigurable multi-projector display system , 2001, Proceedings Visualization, 2001. VIS '01..

[25]  Michael Deering,et al.  Geometry compression , 1995, SIGGRAPH.

[26]  John C. Hart,et al.  The CAVE: audio visual experience automatic virtual environment , 1992, CACM.

[27]  John M. Fujii,et al.  Proceedings of the 23rd annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques , 1996, SIGGRAPH.

[28]  David Ellsworth.  A new algorithm for interactive graphics on multicomputers , 1994, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.

[29]  Kurt Akeley,et al.  RealityEngine graphics , 2000 .

[30]  Terry Winograd,et al.  PointRight: experience with flexible input redirection in interactive workspaces , 2002, UIST '02.

[31]  David Kirk,et al.  The rendering architecture of the DN10000VS , 1990, SIGGRAPH.

[32]  Homan Igehy,et al.  Pomegranate: a fully scalable graphics architecture , 2000, SIGGRAPH.

[33]  Emre Kiciman,et al.  Designing for Maintainability, Failure Resilience, and Evolvability in Ubiquitous Computing Software , 2002 .

[34]  Greg Humphreys,et al.  Chromium: a stream-processing framework for interactive rendering on clusters , 2002, SIGGRAPH.

[35]  John G. Eyles,et al.  PixelFlow: high-speed rendering using image composition , 1992, SIGGRAPH.

[36]  Thomas A. Funkhouser,et al.  Hybrid sort-first and sort-last parallel rendering with a cluster of PCs , 2000, Workshop on Graphics Hardware.

[37]  Henry Fuchs,et al.  Pixel-planes 5: a heterogeneous multiprocessor graphics system using processor-enhanced memories , 1989, SIGGRAPH.

[38]  MolnarSteven,et al.  PixelFlow: high-speed rendering using image composition , 1992 .

[39]  Thomas A. Funkhouser,et al.  Parallel rendering with K-way replication , 2001, Proceedings IEEE 2001 Symposium on Parallel and Large-Data Visualization and Graphics (Cat. No.01EX520).

[40]  Pat Hanrahan,et al.  ICrafter: A Service Framework for Ubiquitous Computing Environments , 2001, UbiComp.