rfinch@caldwr.water.ca.gov (Ralph Finch) (06/06/91)
Just downloaded and compiled khoros: whew! Can somebody provide a comparsion of khoros with other sci-vis packages, whether public or comercial? Others that come to mind are apE, IDL/PV-Wave, AVS... Come to think of it, even just a list of similar packages would be helpful. -- Ralph Finch 916-445-0088 rfinch@water.ca.gov ...ucbvax!ucdavis!caldwr!rfinch Any opinions expressed are my own; they do not represent the DWR
rfinch@caldwr.water.ca.gov (Ralph Finch) (06/12/91)
In article <298@venice.water.ca.gov>, rfinch@caldwr.water.ca.gov (Ralph Finch) writes: > > Can somebody provide a comparsion of khoros with other sci-vis > packages, whether public or comercial? Others that come to mind are > apE, IDL/PV-Wave, AVS... Come to think of it, even just a list of > similar packages would be helpful. I received a couple of high-quality replies...normally I would do a true summary but since the replies don't overlap each other much I'll just reproduce them here. From: rasure@pprg.unm.edu (John Rasure) As the director of the project, I can give you my biased opinion. Then, after you get other reponses, you can distill my comments down and come up with a reasonable view. Khoros is designed to be a software development environment as well as a "visualization" system. The other systems do not have code generators or interactive user interface builders. [rfinch note: PV-Wave, (and IDL is working on it I think) have interface builders; don't know how they compare with khoros. Certainly neither of those has the connect-the-icon/glyph ease] Khoros is good at image and signal processing ... weak in 3D rendering. BUT, AVS and apE programs are easily callable from cantata. The visual langauge in Khoros, cantata, is more capable and some say easier to use than the others. Cantata has flow control, visual hierarchies and variable based parameters. Khoros is an open system. The Khoros X applications can have a distributed user interface (groupware). . . . I gave 2 presentations on Khoros at Los Alamos Labs yesterdday .... and comparison type questions came up. .... from the conversations I would like to add these comments. one person summarized the differences by saying something like " Khoros is much different than apE and AVS ... apE and AVS are designed for visualization of 3d data ... Khoros is a visual programming environment ... I added that you can call apE and AVS modules from within Khoros. Khoros is intended to be a retargetable system. Thanks (p.s. It is very important to qualify the comparison with a statment that says "The best system is the one that solves your problem, all of the systems are important in the evolution of visualization of data and programs." ---------- From: dilsavor@ee.eng.ohio-state.edu (Ron L. Dilsavor) I am somewhat familiar with both khoros and apE. I also hear that apE and AVS are VERY similar. In short, the comparison between khoros and apE goes something like this.. Khoros and apE both provide nice graphical programming interfaces. The difference mainly is what you program. apE is a heavy duty data visualizer; its built in code modules give you the ability to graphically display your data in any way imaginable including volumetric rendering. The focus of khoros modules, however, is on the processing of data (things like ffts, , edge detectors, clustering, speckle reduction, etc). khoros has more extensive data/image processing capability than apE but is less capable of graphically displaying its results. For example, khoros does not provide volumetric rendering. I can imagine using khoros to process data to the point when it's ready to display and then sending the output to apE to do some fancy graphics. I have to admit that khoros' plotting capability is not shabby and is straightforward, however, it just doesn't match apE's extensive plotting capabilities. ---------- -- Ralph Finch 916-445-0088 rfinch@water.ca.gov ...ucbvax!ucdavis!caldwr!rfinch Any opinions expressed are my own; they do not represent the DWR