Perspectives on the IRIS Explorer Visualization Environment

• I¸k " • k-Abstract A critique of Silicon Graphics, Inc.'s medium grain data flow scientific visualization environment IRIS Explorer is presented. Explorer shows promise as an important tool for users to quickly and easily build custom distributed visualization applications. Developers can use Explorer to create new visualization techniques without re-implementing common functionality. There are, however, significant flaws. Although Explorer is no worse than much new UNIX software , by absolute standards Explorer is buggy. Explorer also uses a bit too much memory and is too slow for highly interactive tracking tasks. These problems should be solvable. Database management is weak and this is inherent in the data flow model. The flaws notwithstanding , Explorer is sufficiently reliable and capable to do a great deal of useful work.