Enhancements to VTK enabling scientific visualization in immersive environments

Journal Article · Wed Mar 01 00:00:00 EST 2017 · Proceedings, Virtual Reality, IEEE Annual International Symposium

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1109/VR.2017.7892246· OSTI ID:1595277

O'Leary, Patrick ^[1]; Jhaveri, Sankhesh ^[2]; Chaudhary, Aashish ^[2]; Sherman, William ^[3]; Martin, Ken ^[2]; Lonie, David ^[2]; Whiting, Eric ^[4]; Money, James ^[4]; McKenzie, Sandy ^[2]

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1. Kitware, Inc., Clifton Park, NY (United States); Kitware, Inc.
2. Kitware, Inc., Clifton Park, NY (United States)
3. Indiana Univ., Bloomington, IN (United States)
4. Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)

Modern scientific, engineering and medical computational simulations, as well as experimental and observational data sensing/measuring devices, produce enormous amounts of data. While statistical analysis provides insight into this data, scientific visualization is tactically important for scientific discovery, product design and data analysis. These benefits are impeded, however, when scientific visualization algorithms are implemented from scratch - a time-consuming and redundant process in immersive application development. This process can greatly benefit from leveraging the state-of-the-art open-source Visualization Toolkit (VTK) and its community. Over the past two (almost three) decades, integrating VTK with a virtual reality (VR) environment has only been attempted to varying degrees of success. In this paper, we demonstrate two new approaches to simplify this amalgamation of an immersive interface with visualization rendering from VTK. In addition, we cover several enhancements to VTK that provide near real-time updates and efficient interaction. Lastly, we demonstrate the combination of VTK with both Vrui and OpenVR immersive environments in example applications.

• Research Organization: Kitware, Inc., Clifton Park, NY (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE)
• Grant/Contract Number: SC0012037
• OSTI ID: 1595277
• Alternate ID(s): OSTI ID: 1364111
• Journal Information: Proceedings, Virtual Reality, IEEE Annual International Symposium, Journal Name: Proceedings, Virtual Reality, IEEE Annual International Symposium Vol. 2017; ISSN 2375-5334
• Publisher: IEEE
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING
Scientific visualization
immersive environments
virtual reality