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Containerized Distributed Rendering for Interactive Environments

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Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality (EuroVR 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNIP,volume 10700))

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Abstract

Development and rapid prototyping for large interactive environments like tiled-display walls pose many challenges. One is the heterogeneity of the various applications and libraries. A visual application tailored for a single monitor setup with a certain software environment is difficult to port and distribute to a multi-display, multi-PC setup. As a solution to this problem, we explore the potential of lightweight containerization techniques for distributed interactive applications. In particular, we present how the necessary runtime and build environments including libraries and drivers can be abstracted using the Docker framework. We demonstrate the packing of an existing single-machine GPU-enabled ray tracer inside a container to be used on tiled display walls. The performance measurements reveal that the containerization has a negligible impact on the system’s performance but allows for easy setup, integration, and distribution of complex applications.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    NVIDIA container runtime library, https://github.com/NVIDIA/libnvidia-container, Sep 2017.

  2. 2.

    https://alpinelinux.org, Sep. 2017.

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Acknowledgments

This work was partially supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, grant number 1615/2-1.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University, Sankt Augustin, Germany

    Björn Ludolf Gerdau, Martin Weier & André Hinkenjann

  2. Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany

    Martin Weier

Authors
  1. Björn Ludolf Gerdau
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  2. Martin Weier
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  3. André Hinkenjann
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Correspondence to Martin Weier .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Jernej Barbic

  2. University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom

    Mirabelle D'Cruz

  3. Universität Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

    Marc Erich Latoschik

  4. University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    Mel Slater

  5. University of Paris-Sud, Orsay, France

    Patrick Bourdot

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Gerdau, B.L., Weier, M., Hinkenjann, A. (2017). Containerized Distributed Rendering for Interactive Environments. In: Barbic, J., D'Cruz, M., Latoschik, M., Slater, M., Bourdot, P. (eds) Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. EuroVR 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10700. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72323-5_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72323-5_5

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-72322-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-72323-5

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