Fast interactive 3-D graph visualization

We present a 3-D version of GEM [6], a randomized adaptive layout algorithm for nicely drawing undirected graphs, based on the spring-embedder paradigm [4]. The new version, GEM-3D, contains several improvements besides the adaptation to 3-D geometry. The main result of this work is that for the first time, 3-D layout and presentation techniques are combined available at interactive speed. Even large real-life graphs with hundreds of vertices can be meaningfully displayed by enhancing the presentation with additional visual clues (color, perspective and light) and the possibility of interactive user navigation. In the demonstration, we interactively visualize many graphs (artificial and real-world) of different size and complexity to support our claims. We show that GEM-3D is capable of producing a textbook-like drawing of the PETERSEN graph, a notoriously hard case for automatic drawing tools. To the best of our knowledge, this has not been achieved before by automatic layout algorithms purely based on heuristics.