John Brosz

Single camera flexible projection

We introduce a flexible projection framework that is capable of modeling a wide variety of linear, nonlinear, and hand-tailored artistic projections with a single camera. This framework introduces a unified geometry for all of these types of projections using the concept of a flexible viewing volume. With a parametric representation of the viewing volume, we obtain the ability to create curvy volumes, curvy near and far clipping surfaces, and curvy projectors. Through a description of the frameworks geometry, we illustrate its capabilities to recreate existing projections and reveal new projection variations. Further, we apply two techniques for rendering the frameworks projections: ray casting, and a limited GPU based scanline algorithm that achieves real-time results.

TERRAIN SYNTHESIS BY-EXAMPLE

Synthesizing terrain or adding detail to terrains manually is a long and tedious process. With procedural synthesis methods this process is faster but more difficult to control. This paper presents a new technique of terrain synthesis that uses an existing terrain to synthesize new terrain. To do this we use multi-resolution analysis to extract the high-resolution details from existing models and apply them to increase the resolution of terrain. Our synthesized terrains are more heterogeneous than procedural results, are superior to terrains created by texture transfer, and retain the large-scale characteristics of the original terrain.

Transmogrification: causal manipulation of visualizations

A transmogrifier is a novel interface that enables quick, on-the-fly graphic transformations. A region of a graphic can be specified by a shape and transformed into a destination shape with real-time, visual feedback. Both origin and destination shapes can be circles, quadrilaterals or arbitrary shapes defined through touch. Transmogrifiers are flexible, fast and simple to create and invite use in casual InfoVis scenarios, opening the door to alternative ways of exploring and displaying existing visualizations (e.g., rectifying routes or rivers in maps), and enabling free-form prototyping of new visualizations (e.g., lenses).

Exploring physical information cloth on a multitouch table

We expand multitouch tabletop information exploration by placing 2D information on a physically-based cloth in a shallow 3D viewing environment. Instead of offering 2D information on a rigid window or screen, we place our information on a soft flexible cloth that can be draped, pulled, stretched, and folded with multiple fingers and hands, supporting any number of information views. Combining our multitouch flexible information cloth with simple manipulable objects provides a physically-based information viewing environment that offers similar advantages to complex detail-in-context viewing. Previous detail-in-context views can be re-created by draping cloth over virtual objects in this physics simulation, thereby approximating many of the existing techniques by providing zoomed-in information in the context of zoomed-out information. These detail-in-context views are approximated because, rather than use distortion, the draped cloth naturally drapes and folds showing magnified regions within a physically understandable context. In addition, the information cloth remains flexibly responsive, allowing one to tweak, unfold, and smooth out regions as desired.

The undistort lens

Detail‐in‐context lens techniques can be useful for exploring visualizations of data spaces that are too large or have too much detail to fit in regular displays. For example, by bending the space in the right way we can bring together details from two separate areas for easy comparison while roughly keeping the context that situates each area within the global space. While these techniques can be powerful tools, they also introduce distortions that need to be understood, and often the tools have to be disabled in order to have access to the undistorted data. We introduce the undistort lens, a complement to existing distortion‐based techniques that provides a local and separate presentation of the original geometry without affecting any distortion‐based lenses currently used in the presentation. The undistort lens is designed to allow interactive access to the underlying undistorted data within the context of the distorted space, and to enable a better understanding of the distortions. The paper describes the implementation of a generic back‐mapping mechanism that enables the implementation of undistort lenses for arbitrary distortion based techniques, including those presented in the lens literature. We also provide a series of use‐case scenarios that demonstrate the situations in which the technique can complement existing lenses.

Silhouette rendering based on stability measurement

A better silhouette for a mesh can be rendered if we take into account the stability of edges inside and outside the current silhouette. Using the dot product between the normal and the viewing direction we can measure this stability. This gives us two types of edges: silhouette and non-silhouette and an associated stability of each. We apply this classification and stability measure to achieve several different styles of rendering as well as temporal frame coherence.

Datathons: An Experience Report of Data Hackathons for Data Science Education

Large amounts of data are becoming increasingly available through open data repositories as well as companies and governments collecting data to improve decision making and efficiencies. Consequently there is a need to increase the data literacy of computer science students. Data science is a relatively new area within computer science and the curriculum is rapidly evolving along with the tools required to perform analytics which students need to learn how to effectively use. To address the needs of students learning key data science and analytics skills we propose augmenting existing data science curriculums with hackathon events that focus on data also known as datathons. In this paper we present our experience at hosting and running four datathons that involved students and members from the community coming together to solve challenging problems with data from not-for-profit social good organizations and publicly open data. Our reported experience from our datathons will help inform other academics and community groups who also wish to host datathons to help facilitate their students and members to learn key data science and analytics skills.

Understanding Researchers' Use of a Large, High-Resolution Display Across Disciplines

A driving force behind the design of increasingly large and high resolution displays (LHRDs) has been the need to support the explosion of data in the natural sciences such as physics, chemistry, and biology. However, our experience with an LHRD accessible to researchers across multiple disciplines has shown that they are useful for a wide range of research activities involving large images and data. \ We conducted in-context, semi-structured interviews with researchers from a variety of disciplines about their experiences using the LHRD with their own data. Notably, it became apparent that the size and resolution of the LHRD supported a multitude of activities related to observation, for which zooming or other enlargement methods on standard resolution screens were not sufficient. The interview findings lead to implications for further research into supporting a broader range of disciplines in using large, high-resolution displays.

Designing the Unexpected: Endlessly Fascinating Interaction for Interactive Installations

We present A Delicate Agreement, an interactive art installation designed to intrigue viewers by offering them an unfolding story that is endlessly fascinating. To achieve this, we set our story in the liminal space of an elevator, and populated this elevator with a set of unique characters. Viewers watch the story unfold through peepholes in the elevators doors, where in turn their gaze can trigger changes in the storyline. This storylines interactive response was created via a complex adaptive system using simple rules based on Goffmans performance theory.

EnergyViz: an interactive system for visualization of energy systems

Energy systems are under pressure to transform to address concerns about climate change. The modeling and visualization of energy systems can play an important role in communicating the costs, benefits and trade-offs of energy systems choices. We introduce EnergyViz, a visualization system that provides an interface for exploring time-varying, multi-attribute and spatial properties of a particular energy system. EnergyViz integrates several visualization techniques to facilitate exploration of a particular energy system. These techniques include flow diagram representation to show energy flow, 3D interaction with flow diagrams for expanding viewable data attributes such as emissions and an interactive map integrated with flow diagrams for simultaneous exploration of spatial and abstract information. We also perform level-of-detail exploration on flow diagrams and use smooth animation across the visualizations to represent time-varying data. Finally, we include evaluation results of EnergyViz collected from expert and inexperienced participants.