COVISA extends IRIS Explorer to multi-user visualization.
IRIS Explorer was originally designed as a single-user system. To create a
visualization, the scientist or engineer wires a pipeline of modules together
in the Map Editor. The possibilities for collaboration are very limited:
images or VRML models can be sent to fellow scientists, but there is no scope
for live collaboration.
The COVISA suite of modules transforms IRIS Explorer into a multi-user
environment. Individual users each run their own instance of IRIS Explorer,
creating their own pipelines. The collaboration is `programmed' by wiring in
the COVISA modules which allow data to be passed from one pipeline to
another. In effect, this creates a single shared environment of
inter-connected pipelines.
The MShare modules allow parameter, geometry, lattice or pyramid data to be
transferred between pipelines. For example, a user can connect in an
MShareGeom module to their pipeline at an appropriate point, and have the
geometry data transmitted to a companion MShareGeom module on another user's
pipeline. This allows a variety of collaborative scenarios: - an
expert user can program the major part of the visualization, simply
transferring the final data or image to their collaborators
- collaborators with different expertise can take charge of different parts
of a visualization: in computational steering for example, the computational
scientist might control one part, the visualization scientist another
- full collaboration where each person runs their own version of a common
pipeline, but share control of the parameters of each module
- tutor mode, where the MAdvisor module allows a trainer to launch
modules, or sets of modules, in a trainee's map editor
Essentially the collaboration is programmable to achieve whatever scenario
the group want.
There are two modes of operation: programmable (or on-the-fly) collaboration,
where the collaborators connect modules into their pipelines using the map
editor; and end-user collaboration, where applications are constructed using
the COVISA suite, but packaged into a simple interface with the map
hidden.
This implements a modular visualization system to collaborative working
designed during the EPSRC-funded COVISA project at the University of Leeds and
described in:
Jason Wood, Helen Wright and Ken Brodlie,
Collaborative
Visualization, Proceedings of IEEE Visualization 1997
Conference, edited
by R.Yagel & H.Hagen, pp253-259, ACM Press.