[BiO BB] need help w/ VRML viewer for big graphs - Mozilla plug-in?

[Joe Landman]

Hi Ann

Ann Loraine wrote:

> I'm just getting started with LGL, but it looks like it can give me a VRML
> document that specifies the layout of large graphs (my biggest is 500K
> edges, 9k nodes), and I'd like to find a VRML viewer that might be able to
> handle such a large graph. (I've got a machine w/ 3 gig memory, and access
> to a few others with even more memory, but I don't have admin privs on
> those, so I'd like to avoid bugging the sysadmins about installing new
> software until I'm sure I've got something that will work...)
> 
> If anyone on the list can recommend a good VRML plug-in (for Mozilla) or
> stand-alone viewer that might work for this application, I would be very
> grateful!

Hmmm... Maybe my info is dated, but I had used inventor viewer (the VRML 
1.0 spec was effectively OpenInventor's spec) to view some molecular 
structures I created out of PDB and other coordinates.  Calls these 
fairly simple graphs, several thousand nodes, and tens of thousands of 
edges.  Inventor viewer worked fine for these, though I ran them on an 
SGI at the time.  I have run ivview recently on the same files on my 
laptop without problem.  So if they are v1.0 VRML compliant, you might 
try the OpenInventor viewer as a stand-alone.

> Also, if you have any tips on visualizing large graphs, I'd be grateful for
> those as well!

Get lots of RAM.  And a fast graphics card (accelerated OpenGL) with 
lots of RAM :(

> So far the only thing I've been able to find that appears capable of laying
> out big graphs is LGL...but maybe there are some others?

There are some hyperbolic space viewers for large connected graphs, 
though these are more for drilling in to specific nodes, than seeing the 
large scale structure of the system.

> 
> Thank you in advance for your help!!!
> 
> -Ann
> 

-- 
Joseph Landman, Ph.D
Founder and CEO
Scalable Informatics LLC,
email: landman at scalableinformatics.com
web  : http://www.scalableinformatics.com
phone: +1 734 786 8423
fax  : +1 734 786 8452 or +1 866 888 3112
cell : +1 734 612 4615