Web-based and cloud-based visualization

Web-based solutions are getting increasingly popular in the world of industrial 2D/3D applications. They have a number of benefits for both the solution providers and their end-users:

• Users can connect to an application from anywhere in the world and from any platform
• Multiple users can easily collaborate on one problem
• Unlimited and cheap computing resources available in the cloud, including GPU arrays
• "Software as a service" (SaaS) and convenient subscription-based licensing
• Better protection of intellectual property rights for the server part of an application (compared to desktop application).

OPEN CASCADE offers visualization solutions for web applications that work in most common desktop and mobile web browsers, does not require any specific browser add-ons or extensions and can be tailored to the customer needs:

• Client-side rendering based on JavaScript and WebGL. Solutions of this kind allow users to utilize the client GPU and ensure the fastest application response to user actions, enabling 3D models in desktop and mobile web browsers. Some examples can be found in our Media Gallery.

• Server-side remote rendering. It is the reasonable choice when the visualization data cannot be transferred to the client (e.g. huge size of the model to be visualized, weak client hardware, strict security requirements). With remote rendering, a 2D/3D scene is rendered by the server and sent to the client as a video stream decoded by the client. Thanks to availability of cheap and powerful GPUs in the cloud, remote rendering allows the users to save on investing in graphics hardware purchase and brings the power of high-end graphics cards to mobile devices.