SolaraViz: Visualize PropertyLayers

[EwoutH]

Our new (and current) visualization doesn't support visualising PropertyLayers yet. It would be really great if it could do that.

• PropertyLayers:

  mesa/mesa/space.py

  Line 569 in 290cedd

  class PropertyLayer:

• Visualization: https://github.com/projectmesa/mesa/tree/main/mesa/visualization

I think you need to decide if you want to use matplotlib or altair for it, and then add it either here:

mesa/mesa/visualization/components/matplotlib.py

Lines 13 to 23 in 002d3f4

	def SpaceMatplotlib(model, agent_portrayal, dependencies: list[any] | None = None):
	space_fig = Figure()
	space_ax = space_fig.subplots()
	space = getattr(model, "grid", None)
	if space is None:
	# Sometimes the space is defined as model.space instead of model.grid
	space = model.space
	if isinstance(space, mesa.space.NetworkGrid):
	_draw_network_grid(space, space_ax, agent_portrayal)
	elif isinstance(space, mesa.space.ContinuousSpace):
	_draw_continuous_space(space, space_ax, agent_portrayal)

or here

mesa/mesa/visualization/components/altair.py

Lines 10 to 14 in 002d3f4

	def SpaceAltair(model, agent_portrayal, dependencies: list[any] | None = None):
	space = getattr(model, "grid", None)
	if space is None:
	# Sometimes the space is defined as model.space instead of model.grid
	space = model.space

[EwoutH]

If I'm correct three people implemented a custom space_drawer recently:

• @zjost in Ant Colony Optimization mesa-examples#157
• @vitorfrois in Cholera Voronoi mesa-examples#118
• @rmhopkins4 is working on More parameter functionality in matplotlib (default) drawer visualization #2242

Would one at you give it a go for the PropertyLayer? It's currently blocking us from updating more examples to use the PropertyLayer (and the PropertyGrid), because we can't visualize them in a convenient way yet.

(@Corvince this wouldn't conflict with your work right?)

[EwoutH]

@Corvince maybe we need to have some layer system for the visualization, with the grids and layers being in the background and agents moving on top of those. Each layer/grid can have some transparency and an order in which they are stacked.

[Corvince]

I think thats a bit too far into the realms of a visualization library. This should preferably handled by one of those. But this goes into the direction of some previous discussions on how to restructure our plots so they don't redraw from scratch every time. Need to do some more research into that direction.

I think its also important that we soon provide a PropertyLayer for the experimental cell_space, that would make things a lot more future proof and more motivating to work on

[EwoutH]

Implemented in #2336! Example: projectmesa/mesa-examples#214, and now available in Mesa 3.0.0b0.