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Live in situ visualization of numerical simulations – interactive visualization while the simulation is running – can enable new modes of interaction, including computational steering. Designing easy-to-use distributed in situ architectures, with viewing latency low enough, and frame rate high enough, for interactive use, is challenging. Here, we propose a fully asynchronous, hybrid CPU–GPU in situ architecture that emphasizes interactivity. We also present a transparent implementation of this architecture embedded into the OpenFPM simulation framework. The benchmarks show that our architecture minimizes visual latencies, and achieves frame rates between 6 and 60 frames/second – depending on simulation data size and degree of parallelism – by changing only a few lines of an existing simulation code.

As computer simulations progress to increasingly complex, non-linear, and three-dimensional systems and phenomena, intuitive and immediate visualization of their results is becoming crucial. While Virtual Reality (VR) and Natural User Interfaces (NUIs) have been shown to improve understanding of complex 3D data, their application to live in situ visualization and computational steering is hampered by performance requirements. Here, we present the design of a software framework for interactive VR in situ visualization of parallel numerical simulations, as well as a working prototype implementation. Our design is targeted towards meeting the performance requirements for VR, and our work is packaged in a framework that allows for easy instrumentation of simulations. Our preliminary results inform about the technical feasibility of the architecture, as well as the challenges that remain., 2 pages, 2 figures, accepted at IEEE Large Data Analysis and Visualization (LDAV) 2019