Collaviz is an innovative multi-domain remote collaborative platform (project ANR-08-COSI-003-11 funded
by the french national research agency) for the simulation-based design applications.
Collaviz involves 6 Academic partners (ECP, EGID, INPT, INSA Rennes, LIRIS, Scilab) and 11 Industrial
partners (Artenum, BRGM, Distene, Faurecia, Medit, MCLP Consulting, NECS, Oxalya, TechViz, Teratec)
The major value brought by Collaviz to the scientific and industrial community is to make remote analysis and
collaboration easily available and scalable. Web-based technologies, on the top of shared high-performance
computing and visualization centers, will permit researchers and engineers handling very large data sets, including
3D data models, by using a single workstation, wherever in the world. Just a “standard” internet connexion
will be needed. The classical approach is not adapted anymore: simulation-based design applications
tend to generate Terabytes and even Petabytes of data.
Collaviz deals with four major challenges:
- To provide applications designed for habits of very different communities (geophysics, fluid dynamics, structure, biochemical, drug design…),
- To use mainstream technologies for the service access (low bandwidth internet access, standard hardware for visualization…),
- Interactive and participative collaboration, not only remote “shared display” visualization.
- Moreover, these technologies have to be accessible easily, and Collaviz will provide the proper tools to manage all the services from a user and administrator point of view, to have a full transparent access to these scalable resources: visualization clusters, grid computing, etc.
We have also deployed the Collaviz framework between London (in the CAVE of the University College
of London) and Rennes (in our CAVE), in order to setup an experiment of collaborative manipulation of a
clipping plane inside 3D scientific data. This first real deployment of Collaviz is a success, it has allowed
efficient co-manipulation of a shared 3D object between two really distant users. More details here.
Some realisations with Collaviz in Immersia
