DistPov

Click here to see the Object Model

Source Code:

AddDialog.java ==> Add a machine to the list
BadPPMException.java ==> Just an exception
DistPov.java ==> The main() entry point
PPM.java ==> PPM image class (Beej is the original author)
PPMFrame.java ==> Display a PPM in a window (Beej is the original author)
PovFile.java ==> Pov scene file
PovFileDialog.java ==> Look for a pov file
PovFrame.java ==> The main window for the application
PovOptions.java ==> Set the render options
PovOptionsDialog.java ==> Sets PovOptions
PovRemote.java ==> The interface to the remote method
PovRemoteImpl.java ==> The actual server for the remote method
Render.java ==> The threads to render on the various machines

Notes:

There is a lot of overhead in implementing the rendering of images with RMI. I'm not sure whether it is in RMI itself or if it is in the reconstructing of the image. I might try to implement a different protocol using sockets instead of RMI. I also think that the PPM class could be optimized even more. There was a problem with large images when reconstruction was taking place, the virtual machine kept running out of memory. I might be able to fix this by disposing of the partial images and explicitely calling the garbage collector after each image is concatinated together.

Overall, I think that RMI is a good step forward for Java. I'm hoping that the Java virtual machine gets faster and the network code improves for RMI. Maybe some of the CORBA implementations for Java will be of more use.