Immersive Visualization of Supercomputer Applications: A Survey of Lag Models

The use of virtual reality has been demonstrated to be very useful in the visualization of science and the synthesis of vast amounts of data. Further, advances in high-speed networks makes feasible the coupling of remote supercomputer simulations and virtual environments. The critical performance issue to be addressed with this coupling is the end-to-end lag time (i.e., the delay between a user input and the result of the input). In this paper we quantify the lag times for four diierent applications. These applications range from coupling virtual environments with supercomputers to coupling multiple virtual environments for collaborative design. The lag times for each applications are given in terms of rendering, network, simulation, tracking, and synchronization times. The results of the survey indicate that for some applications it is feasible, in terms of lag times, to couple supercomputers with virtual environments and to couple multiple virtual environments. For the applications with the intolerable lag times, the simulation time dominates the lag time.