[justtoni]

What would you expect from a display to be good enough?

Just as a note, Orb is not there to compete with high volume graph visualizations like Cosmograph, Graphistry, Linkurious. It is more as a child from d3 and vis.js, which are great libraries, that uses d3 simulation and vis-like canvas rendering. We really liked what vis.js team did with the styling of the graph and how you can customize it - this is often a limitation for high volume graph visualizations.

We could also discuss about the analytics usability of seeing a graph with 1 billion nodes. It is definitely awesome, but it is too much data to grasp on as a user seeing it. Clustering or other graph algorithms would help. I think the question is: What is the maximum graph size (number of nodes/edges) when it becomes hard to get any useful visual information expect the graph global state? (e.g. seeing a bar chart with 365 columns (days) is harder to read than a bar chart with a smaller sampling, e.g. per week or month).

I don't know the answer to this, but maybe you will have due to your experience with graph visualizations.

[stuntkite]

You are right. This is a fine rendering layer for datasets of the right size. The space I exist in and am interested in demands a bit more. I think it's just a difference in scale. I do think the article is wrong though. I think we need more graph vis engines of all scales. I think the marketplace for them is just starting to be cracked and there is plenty of room.