Technology Choices

Emscripten compiles C/C++ to WebAssembly, enabling native code to run in browsers with JavaScript interoperability.

• Near-native performance for compute-intensive tasks.
• Reuses mature native libraries and algorithms without full reimplementation.
• Interoperates with JavaScript for UI and I/O integration.

VTK (Visualization Toolkit) provides a full-featured rendering and data-processing framework commonly used in scientific and engineering applications.

• Extensive set of rendering primitives and data filters (isosurfaces, volume rendering, multiblock).
• Well-tested algorithms and production-grade performance optimizations.
• Built-in readers/writers and community tools for common scientific formats.

HDF5 is a widely used hierarchical data format for storing large, complex datasets with metadata, chunking, and compression.

• Efficient access patterns for large datasets via chunking and indexing.
• Rich metadata model for structured scientific data and provenance.
• Extensive tooling for conversion, visualization, and parallel I/O.

Qt and QML provide a mature cross-platform toolkit and a declarative UI language for building interactive, styled user interfaces.

• Declarative bindings and state-driven layouts for fast UI iteration.
• Rich styling, animation, and accessibility features.
• Mechanisms to bridge UI code with native backend logic for performance-sensitive operations.
• Native VTK integration: Qt-based desktop builds can link the native VTK libraries directly, enabling full access to VTK's optimized C++ rendering pipeline and extensions (notably when running outside the browser). This allows maximum performance and use of platform-specific GPU drivers.