iSpy: a powerful and lightweight event display

• Published in: Journal of physics. Conference series Vol. 396; no. 2; pp. 22002 - 6
• Main Authors: Alverson, G, Eulisse, G, McCauley, T, Taylor, L
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bristol IOP Publishing 01.01.2012
• Subjects: Detectors; Extensibility; Format; Large Hadron Collider; Packages; Physics; Solenoids; Teachers; Three dimensional
• ISSN: 1742-6596; 1742-6588; 1742-6596
• DOI: 10.1088/1742-6596/396/2/022002

iSpy is a general-purpose event data and detector visualization program that was developed as an event display for the CMS experiment at the LHC and has seen use by the general public and teachers and students in the context of education and outreach. Central to the iSpy design philosophy is ease of installation, use, and extensibility. The application itself uses the open-access packages Qt4 and Open Inventor and is distributed either as a fully-bound executable or a standard installer package: one can simply download and double-click to begin. Mac OSX, Linux, and Windows are supported. iSpy renders the standard 2D, 3D, and tabular views, and the architecture allows for a generic approach to production of new views and projections. iSpy reads and displays data in the ig format: event information is written in compressed JSON format files designed for distribution over a network. This format is easily extensible and makes the iSpy client indifferent to the original input data source. The ig format is the one used for release of approved CMS data to the public.