Eric T. Whiting

Bio: Eric T. Whiting is an academic researcher from Idaho National Laboratory. The author has contributed to research in topics: Visualization & Data visualization. The author has an hindex of 4, co-authored 8 publications receiving 48 citations.

IQ-Station: a low cost portable immersive environment

Abstract: The emergence of inexpensive 3D-TVs, affordable input and rendering hardware and open-source software has created a yeasty atmosphere for the development of low-cost immersive systems. A low cost system (here dubbed an IQ-station), fashioned from commercial off-theshelf technology (COTS), coupled with targeted immersive applications can be a viable laboratory instrument for enhancing scientific workflow for exploration and analysis. The use of an IQ-station in a laboratory setting also has the potential of quickening the adoption of a more sophisticated immersive environment as a critical enabler in modern scientific and engineering workflows. Prior work in immersive environments generally required special purpose display systems, such as a head mounted display (HMD) or a large projector-based implementation, which have limitations in terms of cost, usability, or space requirements. The alternative platform presented here effectively addresses those limitations. This work brings together the needed hardware and software components to create a fully integrated immersive display and interface system that can be readily deployed in laboratories and common workspaces. By doing so, it is now feasible for immersive technologies to be included in researchers' day-to-day workflows. The IQ-station sets the stage for much wider adoption of immersive interfaces outside the small communities of virtual reality centers. In spite of this technical progress, the long-term success of these systems depends on resolving several important issues related to users and support. Key among these issues are: to what degree should hardware and software be customized; what applications and content are available; and how can a community be developed?

Immersive ParaView: A community-based, immersive, universal scientific visualization application

Abstract: The availability of low-cost virtual reality (VR) systems coupled with a growing population of researchers accustomed to newer interface styles makes this a ripe time to help domain science researchers cross the bridge to utilizing immersive interfaces. The logical next step is for scientists, engineers, doctors, etc. to incorporate immersive visualization into their exploration and analysis workflows. However, from past experience, we know having access to equipment is not sufficient. There are also several software hurdles to overcome. Obstacles must be lowered to provide scientists, engineers, and medical professionals low-risk means of exploring technologies beyond their desktops.

Enhancements to VTK enabling scientific visualization in immersive environments

Abstract: 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. Finally, we demonstrate the combination of VTK with both Vrui and OpenVR immersive environments in example applications.

Immersive Visualization for the Geological Sciences.

Abstract: 47.

Evaluation of Collaborative Actions to Inform Design of a Remote Interactive Collaboration Framework for Immersive Data Visualizations

Abstract: Data visualization and interaction is an important part of understanding and analyzing complex data. Immersive display systems provide benefits to exploration. In this paper, we present a user study to analyze co-located tasks and behaviors during a collaboration task. Results from this study helped us to identify patterns in co-located collaborative interaction to be able to better design remote collaborative environments. We discuss the challenges while interacting with data in an immersive data visualization environment and our design of a remote interactive collaboration framework for analysis and workflow of data visualizations. The goal of this framework is to preserve the benefits of physically co-located collaboration actions and add the benefits of virtual components that do not conform to real world restrictions.

Physics-based multiscale coupling for full core nuclear reactor simulation

Abstract: Abstract Numerical simulation of nuclear reactors is a key technology in the quest for improvements in efficiency, safety, and reliability of both existing and future reactor designs. Historically, simulation of an entire reactor was accomplished by linking together multiple existing codes that each simulated a subset of the relevant multiphysics phenomena. Recent advances in the MOOSE (Multiphysics Object Oriented Simulation Environment) framework have enabled a new approach: multiple domain-specific applications, all built on the same software framework, are efficiently linked to create a cohesive application. This is accomplished with a flexible coupling capability that allows for a variety of different data exchanges to occur simultaneously on high performance parallel computational hardware. Examples based on the KAIST-3A benchmark core, as well as a simplified Westinghouse AP-1000 configuration, demonstrate the power of this new framework for tackling—in a coupled, multiscale manner—crucial reactor phenomena such as CRUD-induced power shift and fuel shuffle.

Visualization in Scientific Computing.

Abstract: : Visualization is often referred to as scientific visualization or visualization in scientific computing. Visualization helps us extract useful information from complex or often voluminous data sets through the use of interactive graphics and imaging. The theory of visualization uses foundations of the following fields and unifying them: Computer Graphics, Image processing, Computer Vision, Computer Aided Design, Signal processing, User Interface Studies, Cognitive Science, and Computational Geometry. The visualization technology was started with excitement and enthusiasm and gradually changed the scientific field for the past two decades. In this presentation we briefly review the following topics: Visualization - Some important points to note Visualization - Microarchitecture workbench Visualization - Medical field Visualization - Computer Generated Forces (CGF).

Survey of Immersive Analytics

Abstract: Immersive analytics (IA) is a new term referring to the use of immersive technologies for data analysis. Yet such applications are not new, and numerous contributions have been made in the last three decades. However, no survey reviewing all these contributions is available. Here we propose a survey of IA from the early nineties until the present day, describing how rendering technologies, data, sensory mapping, and interaction means have been used to build IA systems, as well as how these systems have been evaluated. The conclusions that emerge from our analysis are that: multi-sensory aspects of IA are under-exploited, the 3DUI and VR community knowledge regarding immersive interaction is not sufficiently utilised, the IA community should focus on converging towards best practices, as well as aim for real life IA systems.

IATK: An Immersive Analytics Toolkit

Abstract: We introduce IATK, the Immersive Analytics Toolkit, a software package for Unity that allows interactive authoring and exploration of data visualisation in immersive environments. The design of IATK was informed by interdisciplinary expert-collaborations as well as visual analytics applications and iterative refinement over several years. IATK allows for easy assembly of visualisations through a grammar of graphics that a user can configure in a GUI-in addition to a dedicated visualisation API that supports the creation of novel immersive visualisation designs and interactions. IATK is designed with scalability in mind, allowing visualisation and fluid responsive interactions in the order of several million points at a usable frame rate. This paper outlines our design requirements, IATK's framework design and technical features, its user interface, as well as application examples.

Virtual interaction and visualisation of 3D medical imaging data with VTK and Unity.

Abstract: The authors present a method to interconnect the Visualisation Toolkit (VTK) and Unity. This integration enables them to exploit the visualisation capabilities of VTK with Unity's widespread support of virtual, augmented, and mixed reality displays, and interaction and manipulation devices, for the development of medical image applications for virtual environments. The proposed method utilises OpenGL context sharing between Unity and VTK to render VTK objects into the Unity scene via a Unity native plugin. The proposed method is demonstrated in a simple Unity application that performs VTK volume rendering to display thoracic computed tomography and cardiac magnetic resonance images. Quantitative measurements of the achieved frame rates show that this approach provides over 90 fps using standard hardware, which is suitable for current augmented reality/virtual reality display devices.