Code Park: A New 3D Code Visualization Tool

We introduce Code Park, a novel tool for visualizing codebases in a 3D game-like environment. Code Park aims to improve a programmer's understanding of an existing codebase in a manner that is both engaging and intuitive, appealing to novice users such as students. It achieves these goals by laying out the codebase in a 3D park-like environment. Each class in the codebase is represented as a 3D room-like structure. Constituent parts of the class (variable, member functions, etc.) are laid out on the walls, resembling a syntax-aware "wallpaper". The users can interact with the codebase using an overview, and a first-person viewer mode. We conducted two user studies to evaluate Code Park's usability and suitability for organizing an existing project. Our results indicate that Code Park is easy to get familiar with and significantly helps in code understanding compared to a traditional IDE. Further, the users unanimously believed that Code Park was a fun tool to work with.Comment: Accepted for publication in 2017 IEEE Working Conference on Software Visualization (VISSOFT 2017); Supplementary video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUiy1M9hUK

Software Visualization in 3D: Implementation, Evaluation, and Applicability

The focus of this thesis is on the implementation, the evaluation and the useful application of the third dimension in software visualization. Software engineering is characterized by a complex interplay of different stakeholders that produce and use several artifacts. Software visualization is used as one mean to address this increasing complexity. It provides role- and task-specific views of artifacts that contain information about structure, behavior, and evolution of a software system in its entirety. The main potential of the third dimension is the possibility to provide multiple views in one software visualization for all three aspects. However, empirical findings concerning the role of the third dimension in software visualization are rare. Furthermore, there are only few 3D software visualizations that provide multiple views of a software system including all three aspects. Finally, the current tool support lacks of generating easy integrateable, scalable, and platform independent 2D, 2.5D, and 3D software visualizations automatically. Hence, the objective is to develop a software visualization that represents all important structural entities and relations of a software system, that can display behavioral and evolutionary aspects of a software system as well, and that can be generated automatically. In order to achieve this objective the following research methods are applied. A literature study is conducted, a software visualization generator is conceptualized and prototypically implemented, a structured approach to plan and design controlled experiments in software visualization is developed, and a controlled experiment is designed and performed to investigate the role of the third dimension in software visualization. The main contributions are an overview of the state-of-the-art in 3D software visualization, a structured approach including a theoretical model to control influence factors during controlled experiments in software visualization, an Eclipse-based generator for producing automatically role- and task-specific 2D, 2.5D, and 3D software visualizations, the controlled experiment investigating the role of the third dimension in software visualization, and the recursive disk metaphor combining the findings with focus on the structure of software including useful applications of the third dimension regarding behavior and evolution

Live Visualization of Database Behavior for Large Software Landscapes: The RACCOON Approach

Databases are essential components within large software landscapes, since they are employed in almost every information system. Based on the growing complexity of software systems and a steadily increasing amount of data which is collected, processed, and stored in databases, it is difficult to obtain a live overview of these software landscapes. This often leads to an insufficient knowledge of the actual internal structure and behavior of employed databases. Furthermore, databases are often involved in performance issues within information systems. A solution to these problems is employing live visualizations of databases and related communication from applications within the software landscape. These visualizations allow operators to understand their databases in detail and to analyze database queries performed by applications. Based on established visualization concepts like the entity relationship diagrams and the 3D city metaphor, operators can be supported in the task of database comprehension. Established monitoring techniques, like dynamic and static analysis, can be used to capture necessary information from applications and databases. In this paper, we present our live visualization approach of databases and associated communication for large software landscapes. Our visualization offers two different views – a landscape-level and a database-level perspective. The landscape-level perspective provides an overview of monitored applications and related databases. The database-level perspective reveals database schemas within a database, shows contained tables and relationships, and allows for the inspection of executed queries based on the monitoring information collected at runtime

Visualizing and Analyzing the Structure of AspectJ Software under the Eclipse Platform

Software is naturally intangible and abstract which makes the understanding task difficult. There is a growing need for visualizations that improve the comprehensiveness of its structure, behavior and evolution. Graphically visualizing abstract concepts provides a way to raise the abstraction level and therefore, to reduce the software complexity. The graphical synthetic view that gives a quick idea of its content, logic, structure and its entities' relationships. It is widely accepted that it can represent a valuable support during the development and maintenance processes. As AspectJ is a relatively new language with powerful specific constructs, it deserves support tools to visualize its software systems. This paper presents our recent work in software visualization with respect to analyze and visualize the AspectJ software structures using graphical elements well-known from daily life such as the Polymetric View and the City Metaphor to conduct various powerful analyses and permit an intuitive understanding of a given visualization and therefore, to get quickly an overview of a huge and complex software. VizzAspectJ-2D and VizzAspectJ-3D are two tools support we have built on top of the Eclipse platform respectively for the 2D and 3D visualizations

VITESS 3 Virtual Instrumentation Tool for the European Spallation Source

VITESS is a software widely used for simulation of neutron scattering experiments. Although originally motivated by instrument design for the European Spallation Source, all major neutron sources are available. Existing as well as future instruments on reactor or spallation sources can be designed and optimized, or simulated in a virtual experiment to prepare a measurement, including basic data evaluation. This note gives an overview of the VITESS software concept and usage. New developments are presented, including a 3D visualization of instruments and neutron trajectories, a numerical optimization routine and a parallelization tool allowing to split VITESS simulations on a computer cluste

Snap2Diverse: Coordinating Information Visualizations and Virtual Environments

The field of Information Visualization is concerned with improving with how users perceive, understand, and interact with visual representations of data sets. Immersive Virtual Environments (VEs) excel at providing researchers and designers a greater comprehension of the spatial features and relations of their data, models, and scenes. This project addresses the intersection of these two fields where information is visualized in a virtual environment. Specifically we are interested in visualizing abstract information in relation to spatial information in the context of a virtual environment. We describe a set of design issues for this type of integrated visualization and demonstrate a coordinated, multiple-views system supporting 2D and 3D visualization tasks such as overview, navigation, details-on-demand, and brushing-and-linking selection. Software architecture issues are discussed with details of our implementation applied to the domain of chemical information and visualization. Lastly, we subject our system to an informal usability evaluation and identify usability issues with interaction and navigation that may guide future work in these situations

Open-Source Tools for Volume Estimation of 3D Multicellular Aggregates

Featured Application The main goal of this work is to provide an overview of open-source tools available for researchers interested in estimating the volume of 3D multicellular aggregates (e.g., spheroids, organoids), besides introducing a new version of the Reconstruction and Visualization from Multiple Sections (ReViMS) tool (http://sourceforge.net/p/revims). Abstract The volume is one of the most relevant features that define the treatment of an in vivo tumour. When using cancer 3D in vitro models in pre-clinical studies, it becomes important to evaluate the macroscopic effects of drugs and radiotherapy treatments. Depending on the nature of the 3D in vitro model used, different open-source solutions can be used for measuring the volume by starting from microscope-acquired images. In this work, we introduced several open-source tools today available for estimating the volume of 3D multicellular aggregates (e.g., spheroids, organoids), also giving hints for defining the best software by analysing characteristics of 3D in vitro models and limits of the tools. Finally, using several cancer organoids imaged by a fluorescent microscope, we compared volume estimations obtained with different tools, besides presenting a new version of the Reconstruction and Visualization from Multiple Sections (ReViMS version 2.0) tool. This work aims to be the reference for researchers interested in estimating the volume of 3D multicellular aggregates through an open-source tool.Peer reviewe

Stepping into the Third Dimension

Recent advances in optical-sectioning microscopy, along with novel fluorescent proteins and probes, give us the tools to image molecules and their interactions in space and time. Investigators using these tools routinely collect multichannel three-dimensional (3D) images and time series, but analyzing such complex datasets requires sophisticated visualization techniques. We here provide an overview of the principles and practices of 3D visualization of multichannel microscopic data. We also describe ImageSurfer, a new software package for volume visualization and data analysis. ImageSurfer is freely available (www.imagesurfer.org) and provides powerful interactive tools to explore and analyze complex multichannel 3D datasets. Although ImageSurfer is designed with fluorescent microscopy in mind, it is also effective for other types of data, including 3D datasets acquired by functional magnetic resonance imaging and EM tomography

Medium resolution Computed Tomography through phosphor screen detector and 3D image analysis

Computed Tomography (CT) technology allows the cross sectional imaging of objects nondestructively and is of great importance because of its capability of detecting interior defects. CT technology is especially widely used in the areas of material industries, airspace industries and medical diagnostics. However this detail of information comes at a price. Modern CT data acquisition systems collect huge amounts of data making the processing of that data a significant challenge. In order to deal with continuing demand of large object 3D CT technology and increased 3D CT data size we have developed a large field of view 3D CT scan capability addressing the required resolution (100 [Mu]) and handling the data acquisition, transfer, processing, viewing and information extraction. The new phosphor screen detector employing CCD camera with approximately 44cm x 30cm active imaging area and 3073 x 2048 pixel size, scans large objects at medium resolution. Phosphor screen computed tomography system control software developed in this thesis integrates image acquisition, image calibration, motion control and CT Scan. CT data generated as a result of a scan requires a 3D visualization tool to fulfill goal of inspection and analysis of object. The 3D visualization tool designed at Center of Non Destructive Evaluation employs ray cast volume rendering method to visualize volume CT data on PC. While the ability to get an overview of these large 3D CT data sets (3GB) is powerful, the lack of tools to extract information from this qualitative display limits the 3D CT capability. This research has added another tool to the existing software that will be used to identify and separate features in a sample based on identifying neighbor approach. Algorithms for image analysis and processing like percentage porosity analysis and correction of rogue/bad pixels are also part of the research. The result in dealing with the data acquisition and data manipulation issues is a significant extension of 3D CT imaging capabilities

Metaball graphics package

The goal of this project is to design a metaball graphics package for use in visualization of large object oriented software. In this technique, a metaball is used to represent a software entity and the relationship between these software entities. Appearance attributes such as size, color and texture are used to denote properties of the software entity. The software has been designed as a Java package with a well defined API to create metaballs of different radius, color and texture. This metaball API package can be seen as an extension of the Java3D API. The implementation is based on Java language with J2SDK1.4 and JAVA 3D 1.3. Hence the metaball API package can be used on any popular platform. This report first introduces the scope of the project and then covers state of the art in software visualization, followed by a detailed description of the metaball technique. Then an overview of Java3D is provided, followed by design and implementation detail of the metaball package. Finally application to software visualization id discussed briefly and conclusion. The source code of the metaball API implementation is also enclosed in an electronic format