I probably asked this before.

My model is an evolutionary system that evolves agents towards some goal. When I evolve each successive generation, I have to run N number of simulations —  basically evaluating a population of N genotypes (N is usually 512). By the time I get to the 100th generation, I would have run 100N simulations. 

I want to visualize the behavior of these agents (in the View) — but I want to just observe one simulation, every N simultions. In other words, I want to visualize simulation number 1, simulation number N+1, simulation number 2N+1, and so on… (it doesn’t have to be the first one, neccessarily, it could be just any one from that set of N simulations).

Translated in the model-view-controller lingo:  I want the controller to stop observing the model and rendering the view at certain points while keeping the model running as usual. The reason for this should be obvious: the model runs much much faster without graphics rendering — and I want to observe the progress much more efficiently by peeking into the model, periodically. 

Certain options are out: I don’t want to serialize and re-animate with a separate “player” — I want to observe real-time.

I am more than willing to get under the hood of MASON and directly work on the source (e.g. Controller.java) — all at my own risk, of course. What would be nice is some idea on where I can momentarily “detach” the view and “re-attach” it again.