RACE & WorldWind

Slides

• RACE & WorldWind
• Slides
• Outline
• WorldWind Application Challenges
• RACE to the rescue
• Perfect Symbiosis
• WorldWind perspective: Layers and Panels
• RACE perspective: Lego box of actors
• Demos
• Concrete Schematics
• Abstract Schematics
• So what are these actors anyway?
• How are actors implemented in RACE?
• Actors don't live in a vacuum - RaceActorSystems
• Congratulations - you have reached the bonus part
• RACE and WorldWind under the hood
• Data Integration on demand - ChannelTopics
• Synchronized Viewers
• UI Framework

Outline

more show, less tell:

1. what you will see
2. demo
3. how it works

WorldWind Application Challenges

don't re-invent the wheel:

• how to get & process data
• how to add data-specific UI

RACE to the rescue

• embed WorldWind into RACE application
• RACE adds data acquisition and (WorldWind specific) UI framework

Perfect Symbiosis

• RACE

  • good at importing, routing and processing dynamic data in distributed systems
  • needs multi-display geospatial visualization for (flight) data
  • runs on JVM
  • open sourced & .gov copyrighted

• WorldWind

  • good at rendering layered information on interactive map/globe via OpenGL
  • needs data acquisition interface, UI framework
  • runs on JVM
  • open sourced & .gov copyrighted

WorldWind perspective: Layers and Panels

• RACE provides

  • async thread-safe data import for Layers
  • extensible UI framework of (Swing) Panels

RACE perspective: Lego box of actors

• WorldWind as one of the building blocks
• don't look at the details (yet)

Demos

• live data import (lots of!)
• synchronized remote viewer
• virtual reality

Concrete Schematics

Abstract Schematics

• RACE is not a monolythic application, its a generic framework
• uniform building blocks: Actors
• composition and interaction of actors is configured

So what are these actors anyway?

• concurrency programming model since 1973 (Hewitt et el)
• objects that communicate only through async messages ⟹ no shared state
• process messages one-at-a-time ⟹ sequential code

How are actors implemented in RACE?

• using Akka http://akka.io
• programmed in Scala (running on JVM)
• extended by RaceActor (configuration, state, initialization, remoting)
• uniform programming model for large (WWJ) and small components:

   class ProbeActor (config: Config) extends SubscribingRaceActor {
     def handleMessage = {
       case BusEvent(channel,msg,sender) => println(msg)
     }
   }

Actors don't live in a vacuum - RaceActorSystems

• deterministic, synchronous initialization & termination
• central supervision & control (master)
• distributed - can seamlessly communicate with each other

Congratulations - you have reached the bonus part

• RaceLayers and AkkaSwingBridge
• data-on-demand: ChannelTopics
• remote viewer synchronization
• UI framework - Panels

RACE and WorldWind under the hood

thread-safe data-import and UI model:

Data Integration on demand - ChannelTopics

don't overwhelm UI threads (0.1 sec rule) ⟹ ChannelTopic "producer valves"

Synchronized Viewers

UI Framework