OpenGL Vizserver™ is an SGI® technical and creative computing solution that delivers advanced visualization capabilities and performance to remote desktop users over standard networks. As a component of Visual Area Networking, OpenGL Vizserver allows users to collaboratively view and interact with large data sets stored on a large visualization server using virtually any client at any location in an organization.

OpenGL Vizserver provides this unique capability because high performance and multiuser access are the top considerations in its design. Unaltered applications run on Silicon Graphics Prism® family and SGI® Onyx® family systems and generate visual results in the graphics frame buffer. OpenGL Vizserver then takes the visual results from the frame buffer, compresses them, and sends them to the desktop client, where they are displayed with performance and functionality not natively available on the client. Users at the visualization server and/or on remote client workstations can then collaborate on the data simultaneously, in real time. Since it runs over standard TCP/IP networks, there is no need for costly and restrictive special-purpose networking. OpenGL Vizserver is application transparent and supports nearly any OpenGL® API-based application.

Users who are unable to interact with their complex models or who have long waits for data to load and CPU-intensive analysis to complete will see immediate benefits. When using OpenGL Vizserver, these users will have an experience at the remote desktop that is close to, or in some cases identical to, the experience of being right at the SGI Onyx family system.

Other users who need to have expert input on a desktop problem can use OpenGL Vizserver running on a Silicon Graphics Prism® family, Silicon Graphics® Octane2™, Silicon Graphics® Octane®, or Silicon Graphics Fuel® workstation to directly link up to the domain expert. The distributed, ad-hoc team can then work through the problem at hand without having to worry about copying data, maintaining its consistency, or encountering possible hardware or software inconsistencies between the end-user and expert-user environments.

Who Uses OpenGL Vizserver?

OpenGL Vizserver is designed primarily for any user who is interested in providing remote access or visual collaboration with applications that leverage the power of SGI Onyx family systems. Any users involved in engineering, scientific research, or defense imaging who regularly work with large amounts of data and need to collaborate with colleagues on time-critical decisions are prime candidates for using OpenGL Vizserver. For instance, by combining the power of a Silicon Graphics Prism® system or an SGI® Onyx® 3000 series system with InfiniteReality4™ graphics with OpenGL Vizserver, individual users working at their desks can, for the first time, analyze terabytes of seismic data and collaborate with experts who may be located thousands of miles away.

OpenGL Vizserver clients are available for SGI® IRIX® OS-based systems, such as Silicon Graphics Octane2, Silicon Graphics Fuel, Silicon Graphics® O2+™, and the SGI Onyx family, as well as for Linux®, Solaris™, Windows NT®, Windows® 2000, Windows® XP, and Windows® XP Tablet PC Edition, and Mac OS X.