Premium
Comparing and evaluating computer graphics and visualization software
Author(s) -
Laramee Robert S.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
software: practice and experience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.437
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1097-024X
pISSN - 0038-0644
DOI - 10.1002/spe.850
Subject(s) - visualization , computer science , documentation , computer graphics , software , graphics , benchmark (surveying) , software visualization , software engineering , graphics software , set (abstract data type) , software development , world wide web , computer graphics (images) , software construction , data mining , programming language , geodesy , geography
When starting a new computer graphics or visualization software project, students, researchers, and businesses alike must decide whether or not to start from scratch or with third‐party software. Since computer graphics and visualization applications are typically quite large, developers often build upon existing software libraries in order to take advantage of the tens of thousands of hours worth of development and testing already invested. Thus, developers and managers must face the decision of which library to build on. We present a side‐by‐side comparison and evaluation of four popular, state‐of‐the‐art visualization and computer graphics libraries, namely the Visualization Toolkit (VTK), Open Inventor, Coin3D, and Hoops 3D. The evaluation is based on the feature set, ease of installation, development of a benchmark application, documentation, and technical support for each package. The results of our comparison and evaluation are described and recommendations are given as for whom the libraries are best suited. The VTK prevails on top in many of the aspects we compared and evaluated. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.