Implementing immersive clustering with VR Juggler

Abstract

Continuous, rapid improvements in commodity hardware have allowed users of immersive visualization to employ high-quality graphics hardware, high-speed processors, and significant amounts of memory for much lower costs than would be possible with high-end, shared memory computers traditionally used for such purposes. Mimicking the features of a single shared memory computer requires that the commodity computers act in concert - namely, as a tightly synchronized cluster. In this paper, we describe the clustering infrastructure of VR Juggler that enables the use of distributed and clustered computers for the display of immersive virtual environments. We discuss each of the potential ways to synchronize a cluster for immersive visualization in use today. Then, we describe the VR Juggler cluster infrastructure in detail, and we show how it allows virtual reality application developers to combine various existing clustering techniques to meet the needs of their specific applications. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.