andyrose@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Andy Rose) (12/01/90)
This list of features may be helpful to compare visualization software. Much of this is drawn from AVS, apE and PV~WAVE 2D isocontours 2D plots 3D isosurfaces 3D mesh Animation Arbitrary cutting plane, orthogonal cutting plane Ribbons, Ball and Stick Bubbles (spheres at data point with scalars mapped to color, transparency,size) Image Overlay (compositing with transparency, stencils) Dot Surface Dynamic Probe Feature Marking Graphical Editing Image Processing (contrast enhancement, edge detection, dithering, etc.) Interactive Viewing (i.e. enough graphic speed to display and move objects under user control) Molecular Docking Multivariate Plots Adjustable transparency Particle animation Particle tracing Real-time playback (enough display speed to show consecutive rendered frames quick) Adjustable rendering complexity Shaded surfaces, Ray Tracing, etc. Wireframe Display, hidden line display Curve fitting Space Filling Stereoscopic viewing Volume rendering Streamlines Hedgehog (display vectors related to polygons. Normals for example) Colormap editor, properties editor Visual programming paradigm Asynchronous and synchronous modules Distriubuted computing extensible Data structures (regular mesh, triangular mesh, n-D n-vector fields, geom) Widgets Geometry description language Portable Application Programmer's Interface (hides the network from end-user) Cyclic networks Hierarchical object database Event history module library management command line interface Bounding box 2D/3D texture mapping 2D/3D contour geometry Axis display V for vis. -- Andrew Newkirk Rose '91 Department of Visualization CNSF/Theory Center 632 E & T Building, Hoy Road Ithaca, NY 14583 607 254 8686 andy@cornellf.tn.cornell.edu