S2PLOT:Displays
From S2PLOT
S2PLOT and support for Advanced Displays
S2PLOT has been developed with users of both standard and advanced displays in mind. What is an advanced display? Anything that is more complex than a standard two-dimensional monitor or data projector. This includes:
- desktop and large-scale stereoscopic displays (both active and passive systems);
- anaglyph (red-blue) stereoscopic support on 2-d monitors; and
- digital domes, including fish-eye and MirrorDome solutions.
Our philosophy on advanced displays is simple: make it really easy for programmers/users to access the extra visualisation capabilities of advanced displays without having to significantly change your code, data format, or visualisation package. In S2PLOT, this is achieved through the s2open commands:
For programmers with experience using PGPLOT, these commands are very similiar to the PGOPEN function. The main difference is that PGPLOT supports graphic file devices (such as Postscript images) along with window-based plots, whereas S2PLOT displays are all interactive. To create a static image from an S2PLOT code, you can press the F10 key (see here for details).
The complete list of supported devices can be obtained by using the s2ldev command.
Alternatively, setting the device name argument of s2opend or s2opendo to "/?" will prompt the user to select a display mode at runtime.
For more information on advanced displays, please see:
- Fluke, C.J., Bourke, P.D., O'Donovan, D., 2006, Future Directions in Astronomy Visualization, PASA, 23, 12 (ADS) (astro-ph/0602448)
