I would say that it can be helpful when you can interactively 'fly through' your data. It is possible to use a 'flying' interface with a game engine type backend to allow interactive exploration of massive datasets. I agree that it is mostly pointless for static rendering.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [graph-tool] 3D Layouts?
Local Time: May 22, 2017 4:19 PM
UTC Time: May 22, 2017 3:19 PM
From: tiago@skewed.de
To: graph-tool@skewed.de
On 22.05.2017 15:46, Dirk Reiners wrote:
> s there a fundamental problem with it, or is it just something that has not
> been a priority? In general force-directed layouts are pretty agnostic
> concerning dimensionality, do you think it would be difficult to add? If I
> understand the code correctly (big if ;) positions are just vector<double>
> properties, and the 2D part is more a convention than anything else. This is
> obviously only partially true for the QuadTree part in SFDP, which would
> have to be an octree for 3D, but it might still work at reduced efficiency.
> Are there other limitations that you can think of from the top of your head
> that would make 3D layouts infeasible?
Modifying sfdp_layout() to n-dimensions is indeed straightforward.
The issue is modifying the actual drawing (i.e. graph_draw()) to 3D. We use
cairo in the backend, which is strictly 2D. Implementing 3D would require
the use of something else entirely, like OpenGL.
I have no desire of ever implementing 3D drawing, because I think it is not
really helpful in the majority of cases.
Best,
Tiago
--
Tiago de Paula Peixoto <tiago@skewed.de>
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