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191497, 1996
Copyright 0 1996 ElsevierScienceLtd
Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved
0097-8493/96 515.00+ 0.00
0097-8493(95)00125-5
DISTRIBUTED
Environments
GRAPHICS
SUPPO:RT FOR VIRTUAL
ENVIRONMENT!3
ZHANG
State Key Lab of CAD & CG, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, Zhejiang, China
e-mail: cad-wlcai@zunet.ihep.ac.cn
Abstract-The
networked workstation system is one of the commonly used Virtual Environment (VE)
hardware platforms. In this paper we discuss distributed graphics support for implementation of VE
systems and present an experimental environment called DGPSE + . It provides four kinds of consistency
control methods: mutual exclusion, centralized controller, sequential ordering, and distributed lock. To
meet the real-time requirement of VE systems, DGPSE+ containsa setof parallelgraphics
rendering
algorithms with different computation requirement. A distributed stereoscopic graphics rendering is also
included. It can find out idle or near idle workstations to execute the parallel algorithms. DGPSE + has
advantages such as multiple consistency control mechanisms and powerful graphics rendering support
capability. Copyright 0 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd
1. INTRODUCTION
191
192
(b)
Site A
Fig. 1. Non-distributed/distributed
Site B
, Virtual World
2. SUPPORT
RRQUtREMJZNTS
CONSIDERATION
AND
DESIGN
and asynchronous.
193
to DGPSE
194
EXPERIENCE
(d) Release
0perateonCS;
Executing=FALSE;
CS
for everysiteSkinIi
Si) do
{Ii-Ii-[Sk];
sendRELEASE(Ci,i)
task;
Ri-Ri+[Sk];
1
(except
message
graphics library
195
[ graphics
I application 2
1
.!
:
i
calling
interface
.!
les
- Isa e
Ethernet
computing
server 1
i---l
Fig. 2. Call mechanism of DGFSL
removal, 3-D scan conversion, shading (flat, Gouraud, Phong), ray tracing and radiosity rendering. For
example, if one needs to use ray tracing routine in
SGL, he can use the call of the following form:
IF (mailbox-not-empty)
THENreceive
worker-no,
result);
IF (result<
>nulll)
THENrecord
(result);
put-worker-in-queue(worker_no);
OR
WHENzubproblems-available
worker-no=get-worker_from_queueO;
subproblem=get-task(TS);
196
task allocation
resul
Worker Process
compute
image
Fig. 3. Supervisor-Worker
delete-subproblem(
send(workergo,subproblem);
UNTILdone;
assemble-result;
finalize;
END.
WorkerProcess:
BEGIN
result=null;
LOOP BEGIN
send(supervisor,
result);
WAITmailbox-not-empty;
get~subproblem~from~mailbox;
result=render(subproblem);
END
END.
process
is supported
China.
5.
6.
I.
8.
9.
10.
4. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, we address the problem of distributed graphics support for VE systems. Some extensions have been made to the existing distributed
graphics processing support environment. Compared
with other systems or tools for development of
distributed VE systems, DGPSE+
has obvious
advantages such as powerful distributed graphics
rendering support and more parallelism. However,
structure.
11.
12.
13.
by the National
Nature
Science Foundation
of
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