Distributed Cooperative Visualization

Abstract

Visualization is essentially a collaborative activity, widely used in many scientific and engineering disciplines. Visualization may be used to convey insight into phenomena that are well-understood, or to present new data with a view to finding new patterns of meaning and new phenomena. Visualization is a powerful tool in presentations (lectures, seminars, papers etc) and in discussions between colleagues. We are seeing a growth in the use of video conferencing to facilitate meetings between participants in geographically separate locations, both specialized facilities (video conference rooms) using dedicated communications channels (ISDN, ATM etc) and desktop video conferencing using the Internet and multicast (Mbone) communications. Distributed cooperative visualization aims to enhance the video conferencing environment (usually the desktop environment) with access to visualization facilities. At the most basic level, pre-generated visualizations may be shared through a shared whiteboard tool. Richer approaches enable users to share control of the kind of visualization generated and the parameters used in the generation. The World Wide Web provides a basis for asynchronous cooperative working and there are experimental extensions in the direction of cooperative browsing. VRML provides the basis for sharing 3D graphics over the Internet.We look at ways in which VRML is being used in visualization, to generate models which may be browsed by participants in a session. Asynchronous collaboration becomes possible by recording the details of the visualization created by one participant, and making this available to subsequent ‘visitors’ to the Web site. A multiuser audit trail emerges. Developments on multi-user VRML worlds also have potential applications in visualization, providing a form of synchronous collaboration. This STAR reviews the state of the art in these areas, draws out common threads in these diverse approaches and looks at strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for further development in this field.