Visualizers, like logicians, have long been concerned with meaning. Generalizing from MacEachren’... more Visualizers, like logicians, have long been concerned with meaning. Generalizing from MacEachren’s overview of cartography, visualizers have to think about how people extract meaning from pictures (psychophysics), what people understand from a picture (cognition), how pictures are imbued with meaning (semiotics), and how in some cases that meaning arises within a social and/or cultural context. If we think of the communication acts carried out in the visualization process (see Figure 1), further levels of meaning are suggested. In the figure, visualization begins when someone has data that they wish to explore and interpret; the data are encoded as input to a visualization system, which may in its turn interact with other systems to produce a representation. This is communicated back to the user(s), who have to assess this against their goals and knowledge, possibly leading to further cycles of activity. Each phase of this process involves communication between two parties. For this...
Research by the Visualization & Virtual Reality Research Group (School of Computing, University o... more Research by the Visualization & Virtual Reality Research Group (School of Computing, University of Leeds, UK) includes themes that focus on navigation, collaborative interaction, and gigapixel displays. The group also carries out research into visualization techniques and systems, including new systems technologies for visualization, and tools for investigating features within large datasets. This article summarizes that research and describes current projects that are taking place: Virtual trails to aid real-world navigation, Mobile geophysics, Communication breakdown in collaborative VR, Cancer diagnosis with a VR Microscope, Visual analytic interfaces for optimization, and Overlays for graph exploration.
The problem of producing a photorealistic rendering of a graphical model continues to be the focu... more The problem of producing a photorealistic rendering of a graphical model continues to be the focus of considerable research effort in the computer graphics community. However, ph
Topological simplification of scalar and vector fields is well-established as an effective method... more Topological simplification of scalar and vector fields is well-established as an effective method for analysing and visualising complex data sets. For multi-field data, topological analysis requires simultaneous advances both mathematically and computationally. We propose a robust multivariate topology simplification method based on ``lip''-pruning from the Reeb Space. Mathematically, we show that the projection of the Jacobi Set of multivariate data into the Reeb Space produces a Jacobi Structure that separates the Reeb Space into simple components. We also show that the dual graph of these components gives rise to a Reeb Skeleton that has properties similar to the scalar contour tree and Reeb Graph, for topologically simple domains. We then introduce a range measure to give a scaling-invariant total ordering of the components or features that can be used for simplification. Computationally, we show how to compute Jacobi Structure, Reeb Skeleton, Range and Geometric Measure...
The problem in trying to pin down or provide a universally acceptable definition of virtual reali... more The problem in trying to pin down or provide a universally acceptable definition of virtual reality is that it is still evolving. Virtual reality comes in many guises for which there is no dominant paradigm. This is in contrast to Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) employing direct manipulation techniques through input interactive devices: keyboard and mouse. In response to fundamental questions, such as "What is virtual reality?", "What makes virtual reality different from other computer generated graphical systems, for example: GUIs, CAD, and drawing and modelling systems?", "If a sense of presence and immersion can be obtained from other media, such as, cinema and television, what is it that distinguishes virtual reality from these media?" - a mixed and varied collection of answers would be given from researchers, academics and practitioners of virtual reality.
(Other Panelists to be Announced) The following position statements were available when the proce... more (Other Panelists to be Announced) The following position statements were available when the proceedings went to press. Ian Hayes In developing computing systems there are two areas of concern:
Topology provides a rigorous foundation for identifying features and transitions within data. How... more Topology provides a rigorous foundation for identifying features and transitions within data. However, computing and presenting topological features in multi-dimensional range space is still a difficult problem. The Joint Contour Net therefore is proposed as a data structure which quantizes the variation of multiple variables and presents multiple-field topology. In this paper, we apply the Joint Contour Net to real-world applications in order to present, analyse and explore features related to phenomenon. We have proposed a framework based on Joint Contour Net for iterative data exploration and knowledge discovery. The data set we investigate is from a simulation of Isabel Hurricane. We are able to demonstrate that the multi-field topological features such as rainbands, air flow and hurricane eye, as well as their relationship, can be exploited from a global topological view.
Contour Trees and Reeb Graphs are firmly embedded in scientific visualization for analysing univa... more Contour Trees and Reeb Graphs are firmly embedded in scientific visualization for analysing univariate (scalar) fields. We generalize this analysis to multivariate fields with a data structure called the Joint Contour Net that quantizes the variation of multiple variables simultaneously. We report the first algorithm for constructing the Joint Contour Net. We also demonstrate that Contour Trees for individual variables can be extracted from the Joint Contour Net.
Visualizers, like logicians, have long been concerned with meaning. Generalizing from MacEachren’... more Visualizers, like logicians, have long been concerned with meaning. Generalizing from MacEachren’s overview of cartography, visualizers have to think about how people extract meaning from pictures (psychophysics), what people understand from a picture (cognition), how pictures are imbued with meaning (semiotics), and how in some cases that meaning arises within a social and/or cultural context. If we think of the communication acts carried out in the visualization process (see Figure 1), further levels of meaning are suggested. In the figure, visualization begins when someone has data that they wish to explore and interpret; the data are encoded as input to a visualization system, which may in its turn interact with other systems to produce a representation. This is communicated back to the user(s), who have to assess this against their goals and knowledge, possibly leading to further cycles of activity. Each phase of this process involves communication between two parties. For this...
Research by the Visualization & Virtual Reality Research Group (School of Computing, University o... more Research by the Visualization & Virtual Reality Research Group (School of Computing, University of Leeds, UK) includes themes that focus on navigation, collaborative interaction, and gigapixel displays. The group also carries out research into visualization techniques and systems, including new systems technologies for visualization, and tools for investigating features within large datasets. This article summarizes that research and describes current projects that are taking place: Virtual trails to aid real-world navigation, Mobile geophysics, Communication breakdown in collaborative VR, Cancer diagnosis with a VR Microscope, Visual analytic interfaces for optimization, and Overlays for graph exploration.
The problem of producing a photorealistic rendering of a graphical model continues to be the focu... more The problem of producing a photorealistic rendering of a graphical model continues to be the focus of considerable research effort in the computer graphics community. However, ph
Topological simplification of scalar and vector fields is well-established as an effective method... more Topological simplification of scalar and vector fields is well-established as an effective method for analysing and visualising complex data sets. For multi-field data, topological analysis requires simultaneous advances both mathematically and computationally. We propose a robust multivariate topology simplification method based on ``lip''-pruning from the Reeb Space. Mathematically, we show that the projection of the Jacobi Set of multivariate data into the Reeb Space produces a Jacobi Structure that separates the Reeb Space into simple components. We also show that the dual graph of these components gives rise to a Reeb Skeleton that has properties similar to the scalar contour tree and Reeb Graph, for topologically simple domains. We then introduce a range measure to give a scaling-invariant total ordering of the components or features that can be used for simplification. Computationally, we show how to compute Jacobi Structure, Reeb Skeleton, Range and Geometric Measure...
The problem in trying to pin down or provide a universally acceptable definition of virtual reali... more The problem in trying to pin down or provide a universally acceptable definition of virtual reality is that it is still evolving. Virtual reality comes in many guises for which there is no dominant paradigm. This is in contrast to Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) employing direct manipulation techniques through input interactive devices: keyboard and mouse. In response to fundamental questions, such as "What is virtual reality?", "What makes virtual reality different from other computer generated graphical systems, for example: GUIs, CAD, and drawing and modelling systems?", "If a sense of presence and immersion can be obtained from other media, such as, cinema and television, what is it that distinguishes virtual reality from these media?" - a mixed and varied collection of answers would be given from researchers, academics and practitioners of virtual reality.
(Other Panelists to be Announced) The following position statements were available when the proce... more (Other Panelists to be Announced) The following position statements were available when the proceedings went to press. Ian Hayes In developing computing systems there are two areas of concern:
Topology provides a rigorous foundation for identifying features and transitions within data. How... more Topology provides a rigorous foundation for identifying features and transitions within data. However, computing and presenting topological features in multi-dimensional range space is still a difficult problem. The Joint Contour Net therefore is proposed as a data structure which quantizes the variation of multiple variables and presents multiple-field topology. In this paper, we apply the Joint Contour Net to real-world applications in order to present, analyse and explore features related to phenomenon. We have proposed a framework based on Joint Contour Net for iterative data exploration and knowledge discovery. The data set we investigate is from a simulation of Isabel Hurricane. We are able to demonstrate that the multi-field topological features such as rainbands, air flow and hurricane eye, as well as their relationship, can be exploited from a global topological view.
Contour Trees and Reeb Graphs are firmly embedded in scientific visualization for analysing univa... more Contour Trees and Reeb Graphs are firmly embedded in scientific visualization for analysing univariate (scalar) fields. We generalize this analysis to multivariate fields with a data structure called the Joint Contour Net that quantizes the variation of multiple variables simultaneously. We report the first algorithm for constructing the Joint Contour Net. We also demonstrate that Contour Trees for individual variables can be extracted from the Joint Contour Net.
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