Jef's web files - Visualization

Visualization

Sun, 02 May 2004 11:41:09 -0400

Visualization

Croquet Project

Tue, 20 Sep 2005 12:03:40 -0400

WHAT IF... ...we were to create a new operating system and user interface knowing what we know today, how far could we go? What kinds of decisions would we make that we might have been unable to even consider 20 or 30 years ago, when the current set of operating systems were first created? ...we could collaborate with one another in an online dimension to create or simulate anything we wanted to? ...we had the robustness of a 3D immersive technology, the diversity of the Internet, and the degree of social interaction we have in the real world? Enter Croquet. CROQUET IS... ...a combination of open source computer software and network architecture that supports deep collaboration and resource sharing among large numbers of users. Such collaboration is carried out within the context of a large-scale distributed information system. The software and architecture define a framework for delivering a scalable, persistent, and extensible interface to network delivered resources.

Zoomgraph

Sun, 14 Nov 2004 15:17:11 -0500

A zoomable interface to large graphs allowing for the visualization of graphs and networks on an infinite plane with infinite (smooth) zoom. Try the applet to get a sense of this. A database driven system that allows nodes and edges to include attributes beyond basic display features (we support continuous, categorical, and binary attributes). Zoomgraph lets you represent those features in a database and through a powerful interpreted, embedded language allows you to easily manipulate the graph based on those features. For example: * Color all people in the HR department blue: nodecolor blue dept = 'HR'

Crystal Space 3D Game Development Kit

Mon, 02 Aug 2004 01:36:42 -0400

Crystal Space is a free (LGPL) and portable 3D Game Development Kit written in C++. It supports: true six degrees of freedom, colored lighting, lightmapped and stencil based lighting, shader support, mipmapping, portals, mirrors, alpha transparency, reflective surfaces, 3D sprites (frame based or with skeletal animation, also using cal3d animation library), procedural textures, particle systems, halos, volumetric fog, scripting (using Python, Perl, Java, or potentially other languages), 16-bit and 32-bit display support, OpenGL, and software renderer, font support, hierarchical transformations, physics plugin based on ODE, ... See the extensive list of features for more details.

"Virtual clay" brings act of sculpting to the virtual world

Mon, 02 Aug 2004 11:20:48 -0400

Researchers from UB's Virtual Reality Lab have developed a new tool for transmitting physical touch to the virtual world.

Their virtual clay sculpting system enables users to replicate in real time on a personal computer the physical act of sculpting a block of clay or other malleable material. The resulting 3-D electronic shape shown on the computer screen then can be fine-tuned for product design using standard computer-aided design/modeling software.

"This technology will give product designers, or even artists, a tool that will allow them to touch, shape and manipulate virtual objects just as they would with actual clay models or sculptures," says Thenkurussi Kesavadas, director of the Virtual Reality Lab and associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Fragments boost 3D TV

Wed, 23 Jun 2004 15:58:33 -0400

In January 2001, CBS spiced up its coverage of the Super Bowl with a special effect that allowed the broadcaster to freeze a replay, arbitrarily change the viewpoint and continue the replay. Researchers around the world are looking to take this technology further by enabling viewpoint changes as the action, including live-action, unfolds, and by letting viewers controlled viewpoint.

The formidable technical challenge in presenting real-time, free-viewpoint three-dimensional video is the enormous amount of information contained in the stream of video information.

Researchers from Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich have devised a way to process three-dimensional video in real-time that reduces the amount of data to the manageable level of 3 megabits per second.

"Aristotle" (The Knowledge Web)

Mon, 31 May 2004 00:20:15 -0400

(DANNY HILLIS:) I have always envied Alexander the Great, because he had Aristotle as a personal tutor. In those days, Aristotle knew pretty much everything there was to know. Even better, Aristotle understood the mind of Alexander. He understood which topics interested Alexander, what Alexander knew and did not know, and what kinds of explanations Alexander preferred. Aristotle had been a student of Plato, and he was himself a great teacher. We know from his writings that he was full of examples, explanations, arguments, and stories. Through Aristotle, Alexander had the knowledge of the world at his command.

Of course no one today knows all that is known, in the sense that Aristotle did. Now there is far too much knowledge for that to be possible. The scientific revolution, and the technological revolution that followed it, led to a self-reinforcing explosion of knowledge. The explosion continues. Today not even the most highly trained scientist, the most scholarly historian, or the most competent engineer can hope to have more than a general overview of what is known. Only specialists understand most of the new discoveries in science, and even the specialists have trouble keeping up.

This problem isn't new. In 1945, Vannevar Bush wrote an essay for Atlantic Monthly about out the problem of too much knowledge. He wrote,

Pydot, a Python interface to Graphviz's Dot language

Tue, 03 Aug 2004 11:58:13 -0400

An interface for creating both directed and non directed graphs from Python. Currently all attributes implemented in the Dot language are supported (up to Graphviz 1.10). Output can be inlined in Postscript into interactive scientific environments like TeXmacs, or ouput in any of the format's supported by the Graphvix tools dot, neato, twopi.

Pydot home page

Visual Thesaurus

Tue, 03 Aug 2004 11:57:02 -0400

Uses Thinkmap to display dynamic graphs of related words.

HyperGraph

Tue, 03 Aug 2004 11:56:10 -0400

HyperGraph is an open source project which provides java code to work with hyperbolic geometry and especially with hyperbolic trees. It provides a very extensible api to visualize hyperbolic geometry, to handle graphs and to layout hyperbolic trees. As soon as you want to look at large data volume that has a hierarchical structure, you will find hyperbolic trees very useful - they show more data than standard tree representations like your favorite explorer, and they have a great look and feel.

Shaping the Next One Hundred Years

Fri, 11 Jun 2004 14:47:05 -0400

Shaping the Next One Hundred Years: New Methods for Quantitative, Long-Term Policy Analysis
By Robert J. Lempert, Steven W. Popper, Steven C. Bankes
Copyright 2003

Pygame

Tue, 04 May 2004 16:18:57 -0400

Pygame is a set of Python modules designed for writing games. It is written on top of the excellent SDL library. This allows you to create fully featured games and multimedia programs in the python language. Pygame is highly portable and runs on nearly every platform and operating system.