Distributed Information Processing and Rendering for 3D Simulation Applications

Abstract

Abstract-The growing demand for 3D simulation techniques in various application domains leads to more and more specialized tools and complex frameworks. Between homogeneous or inhomogeneous clients, data has to be distributed and synchronized in centralized or decentralized setups. Hardware/Software-in-the-Loop and Co-Simulation are common tasks in virtual prototyping. Load balancing and parallelization is necessary for computationally intensive simulations. Spatially distributed developers and designers collaborate in networked virtual environments. All these different applications impose different requirements on the data distribution and synchronization mechanism. In this paper, we categorize distribution scenarios, their requirements and according synchronization techniques. Four different approaches with different key aspects are presented and compared by means of a reference implementation and several application examples. This overview shall enable the reader to choose the approach best suited for his particular distribution problem.