Visual debugging of visualization software: a case study for particle systems

Abstract

Visualization systems are complex dynamic software systems. Debugging such systems is difficult using conventional debuggers because the programmer must try to imagine the threedimensional geometry based on a list of positions and attributes. In addition, the programmer must be able to mentally animate changes in those positions and attributes to grasp dynamic behaviors within the algorithm. In this paper we shall show that representing geometry, attributes, and relationships graphically permits visual pattern recognition skills to be applied to the debugging problem. The particular application is a particle system used for isosurface extraction from volumetric data. Coloring particles based on individual attributes is especially helpful when these colorings are viewed as animations over successive iterations in the program. Although we describe a particular application, the types of tools that we discuss can be app~edto a varietyofproblems.

Using Visualization to Debug Visualization Software

“…Crossno and Angel [1] describe some debugging tools incorporated in their particle visualization system. Although there are previous papers on the topic of algorithm visualization and animation itself, this is the only previous work we found directly on the subject of debugging visualization.…”

“…Another example, given in detail by Crossno and Angel [1], describes debugging strategies for a particle visualization system. Their debugging options include mapping particle color to: (1) energy level, (2) type, (3) amount of repulsion, (4) number of neighboring links, and (5) age.…”

A visualization tool for analyzing cluster performance data

“…The use of visualization to debug parallel programs is described in [5]. Several systems instrument applications based on message passing architectures.…”

Case study: Visual debugging of finite element codes

“…This work builds upon our previous work in debugging particle systems [3] and cluster hardware [4] [5]. Although we have not found any previous work that uses visualization to debug finite element codes in particular, using visualization to debug or do performance analysis of parallel programs is relevant.…”