Agents Based Visualization and Strategies

Abstract

This paper describes a flexible visualization architecture based on software agents, which enables the abstraction and reuse of rendering strategies. Using a reification of the rendering environment, the system is able to add new rendering strategies (such as distributed rendering or progressive rendering) to an existing pipeline, without any modification of the other components (controls components, display components, rendering algorithms, etc. ). The ability of changing strategies on the fly leads to a better adaptability to runtime constraints. The system uses an agent-based graphic pipeline, where each agent/component can be located on different computers; communications between agents use XML/RPC and data stream in order to easily integrate existing code in the system. Agents can add specific behavior to graphic pipelines, such as saving environments to reuse them, adapt information and knowledge from another pipeline, and generally modify and improve the entire system. Various visualization and control clients exist, enabling collaboration between platforms such as PDAs, Windows, Linux, MacOS X, and Web (using Java applets).