Epiphany/3D is an interactive data visualization tool as well as a distributed, extensible user interface.

Epiphany/3D can render application data defined by other applications and also display user interface elements defined by these applications. Interaction with these element will result in notification messages being sent back to the other application.

Epiphany/3D was conceived out of a desire to provide a generic 3D visualization package and user interface for scientific applications (referred to here as .driver. applications) and network architectures. These applications, which generate interesting and often complex data sets, are often written in languages and platforms poorly suited to 3D visualization or esoteric controls. Likewise, researchers are sometimes simply unable to invest the time to develop the additional software or domain expertise required to put together a sophisticated rendering system or user interface.

E3D communicates with the driver application via TCP, which allows it to interact with the running application, render models generated by the application, and manipulate data sets (see below). This provides third party developers with a fairly simply API for developing scientific applications with sophisticated rendering and user interfaces: one need only write a network listener and provide an XML parser (which are becoming ubiquitous and can be obtained free of charge). Epiphany is also capable of reading models and commands directly from files, which can be specified at the command line during startup or opened from a file I/O dialog at run time.

Epiphany/3D currently supports two types of network protocols, XML and Lisp S-Expressions. Epiphany/3D can act as a server (listening for an incoming connections from the application) or a client (establishing a connection with a listening application). E3D will only allow one connection at any time.

Epiphany/3D currently supports two types of network protocols, XML and Lisp S-Expressions. Epiphany/3D can act as a server (listening for an incoming connections from the application) or a client (establishing a connection with a listening application). E3D will only allow one connection at any time.