Virtual Reality-Based Visualization of Geometric Data

Data visualization is an important tool for aiding understanding and forming hypotheses for researchers in a wide range of fields, and, in recent years, head mounted displays for Virtual Reality (VR) have emerged as a mature and inexpensive technology for immersive visualization that also provides very intuitive user interaction. In this inter-disciplinary research project, a platform will be developed for virtual reality.

based visualization of 3D geometry (specifically surfaces). It will be applied to three target disciplines: the study of digital heritage objects, material science, and shape and topology optimization. In all three disciplines, there is a need for researchers to be able to inspect a surface visually. While heritage objects (e.g. fossils or artifacts) clearly exist or existed, it is often much easier to provide access to a digital replica than the original. In the case of material science, the surfaces in question tend to be much too small for visual inspection, and surfaces that arise from optimization can clearly only be inspected virtually. But current ways of interfacing with geometric data are limited by the unintuitive mapping between the 3 degrees of freedom of the mouse and the six degrees of freedom in 3D space. Hence the need for a more intuitive visualization platform that maps directly to the six degrees of freedom in 3D space. The platform will be developed in collaboration with researchers from the target disciplines. The effectiveness of the visualization methods will be tested in case studies, and iteratively developed to bring documentable benefits to practitioners of the target disciplines.