Browsing by Author "Müller, Christoph"

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Open Access
Interactive molecular graphics for augmented reality using HoloLens
(2018) Müller, Christoph; Krone, Michael; Huber, Markus; Biener, Verena; Herr, Dominik; Koch, Steffen; Reina, Guido; Weiskopf, Daniel; Ertl, Thomas
Immersive technologies like stereo rendering, virtual reality, or augmented reality (AR) are often used in the field of molecular visualisation. Modern, comparably lightweight and affordable AR headsets like Microsoft’s HoloLens open up new possibilities for immersive analytics in molecular visualisation. A crucial factor for a comprehensive analysis of molecular data in AR is the rendering speed. HoloLens, however, has limited hardware capabilities due to requirements like battery life, fanless cooling and weight. Consequently, insights from best practises for powerful desktop hardware may not be transferable. Therefore, we evaluate the capabilities of the HoloLens hardware for modern, GPU-enabled, high-quality rendering methods for the space-filling model commonly used in molecular visualisation. We also assess the scalability for large molecular data sets. Based on the results, we discuss ideas and possibilities for immersive molecular analytics. Besides more obvious benefits like the stereoscopic rendering offered by the device, this specifically includes natural user interfaces that use physical navigation instead of the traditional virtual one. Furthermore, we consider different scenarios for such an immersive system, ranging from educational use to collaborative scenarios.
Open Access
Power overwhelming : the one with the oscilloscopes
(2024) Gralka, Patrick; Müller, Christoph; Heinemann, Moritz; Reina, Guido; Weiskopf, Daniel; Ertl, Thomas
Visualization as a discipline has to investigate its practical implications in a world steadily moving toward greener computing methods. Quantifying the power consumption of visualization algorithms is thus essential, given the ever-increasing energy needs of GPUs. Previous approaches rely on integrated sensors or invasive methods that require modifications and special test setups. However, they still suffer from imprecision from low sampling rates and integration over time. Using a high-precision, high-frequency setup via steerable oscilloscopes, we can objectively measure the resulting quality of previous approaches. This is essential to establish a ground truth, pave the way for improved modeling of power consumption in general, and enable better estimates based on the output of lower-quality sensors. We finally discuss benefits that can be drawn from the additional insight of the higher-precision setup and which additional use cases can justify the incurred costs.
Open Access
Quantifying performance gains of DirectStorage for the visualisation of time-dependent particle datasets
(2024) Müller, Christoph; Ertl, Thomas
Visualisation is an essential tool for analysing unstructured particle data as they are produced, for instance, in molecular dynamics or astrodynamics simulations. Such simulations often comprise multiple time steps, and scientists produce datasets with more and more particles in each step. To handle the steadily increasing size of these simulations, many solutions based on organising the data efficiently or reducing their amount using compression have been proposed over the years. Recently, a new storage API called DirectStorage has been introduced on Xbox consoles and Windows. DirectStorage promises a dramatic reduction of loading times in games by making the transfer from NVMe drives to graphics memory more efficient. That begs the question of whether DirectStorage is also beneficial for visualising time-dependent particle data that have to be streamed from disc to the GPU and whether a potential improvement in throughput enables interactive streaming of frames that traditional APIs cannot handle. For that, we implemented a benchmarking application that supports different streaming methods. We report on the results of an extensive series of tests with varying parameters that influence the streaming performance, which show that the performance of DirectStorage is highly dependent on the choice of various parameters.
Open Access
Your visualisations are going places : SciVis on gaming consoles
(2024) Becher, Michael; Müller, Christoph; Sellenthin, Dominik; Ertl, Thomas; Reina, Guido; Weiskopf, Daniel
Gaming consoles, whether stationary or handheld, are designed to provide a reasonably high level of computing power to run contemporary video games at an attractive price point, a compact form factor and modest energy consumption. While consoles have traditionally been closed-off systems, recent versions of the Xbox allow the development of apps for the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) on retail devices, making it potentially a suitable platform for bringing scientific visualisation (SciVis) applications to the masses. We describe how to run such applications, namely volume rendering and ray casting of spherical glyphs, on commodity gaming systems, not only on the Xbox Series X/S, but also on handheld devices like the Steam Deck. We detail the challenges and limitations we encountered during the implementation and provide the results of an extensive study of rendering performance, not only proving the viability of the approach but also allowing for a cost and benefit evaluation compared to standard desktop computers.