Open Visualization Environment (OVE): A web framework for scalable rendering of data visualizations

Abstract

Scalable resolution display environments, including immersive data observatories, are emerging as equitable and socially engaging platforms for collaborative data exploration and decision making. These environments require specialized middleware to drive them, but, due to various limitations, there is still a gap in frameworks capable of scalable rendering of data visualizations. To overcome these limitations, we introduce a new modular open-source middleware, the Open Visualization Environment (OVE). This framework uses web technologies to provide an ecosystem for visualizing data using web browsers that span hundreds of displays. In this paper, we discuss the key design features and architecture of our framework as well as its limitations. This is followed by an extensive study on performance and scalability, which validates its design and compares it to the popular SAGE2 middleware. We show how our framework solves three key limitations in SAGE2. Thereafter, we present two of our projects that used OVE and show how it can extend SAGE2 to overcome limitations and simplify the user experience for common data visualization use-cases.