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Showing papers in "IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications in 2017"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The special Art on Graphics article explores the potential of data comics and their unique ability to communicate both data and context via compelling visual storytelling.
Abstract: As we increasingly rely on data to understand our world, and as problems require global solutions, we need to effectively communicate that data to help people make informed decisions. The special Art on Graphics article explores the potential of data comics and their unique ability to communicate both data and context via compelling visual storytelling.

74 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The proposed fast, efficient technique for performing neural style transfer of human motion data uses a feed-forward neural network trained on a large motion database to transform the style of motion thousands of times faster than previous approaches that use optimization.
Abstract: Automating motion style transfer can help save animators time by allowing them to produce a single set of motions, which can then be automatically adapted for use with different characters. The proposed fast, efficient technique for performing neural style transfer of human motion data uses a feed-forward neural network trained on a large motion database. The proposed framework can transform the style of motion thousands of times faster than previous approaches that use optimization.

63 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors draw from visual analytics concepts to address the growing need for individuals to manage information on personal devices and explore the possibilities for such interfaces using head-worn display technology.
Abstract: As wearable devices gain acceptance, we need to ask, What will user interfaces look like in a post-smartphone world? Will these future interfaces support sophisticated interactions in a mobile context? The authors draw from visual analytics concepts to address the growing need for individuals to manage information on personal devices. Spatial analytic interfaces (SAIs) can leverage the benefits of spatial interaction to enable everyday visual analytics tasks to be performed in-situ, at the most beneficial place and time. They explore the possibilities for such interfaces using head-worn display technology and discuss current developments and future research goals for the successful development of SAIs.

49 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A novel method that uses position-based dynamics (PBD) for mesh-free cutting simulation and proposed solutions include a method to efficiently render force feedback while cutting, an efficient heat diffusion model to simulate electrocautery, and a novel adaptive skinning scheme based on oriented particles.
Abstract: Simulations of cuts on deformable bodies have been an active research subject for more than two decades. However, previous works based on finite element methods and mass spring meshes cannot scale to complex surgical scenarios. This article presents a novel method that uses position-based dynamics (PBD) for mesh-free cutting simulation. The proposed solutions include a method to efficiently render force feedback while cutting, an efficient heat diffusion model to simulate electrocautery, and a novel adaptive skinning scheme based on oriented particles.https://extras.computer.org/extra/mcg2017030024s1.mp4

43 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A user interface abstraction layer to enhance reconfigurability is introduced and a VR-based interface that utilizes immersive technologies to reduce user faults and mental fatigue is described.
Abstract: Human-machine interfaces play a crucial role in intervention robotic systems operated in hazardous environments, such as deep sea conditions. This article introduces a user interface abstraction layer to enhance reconfigurability. It also describes a VR-based interface that utilizes immersive technologies to reduce user faults and mental fatigue. The goal is to show the user only the most relevant information about the current mission.

41 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A visual analytics system that uses multidimensional scaling (MDS) to transform the air-quality data from monitor stations into 2D plots and uses hierarchical clustering, Voronoi diagrams, and storyline visualizations to help experts explore various attributes and time scales in the data.
Abstract: With the rapid development of industrial society, air pollution has become a major issue in the modern world. The development and widespread deployment of sensors has enabled the collection of air-quality datasets with detailed spatial and temporal scales. Analyses of these spatiotemporal air-quality datasets can help decision makers explore the major causes of air pollution and find efficient solutions. The authors designed a visual analytics system that uses multidimensional scaling (MDS) to transform the air-quality data from monitor stations into 2D plots and uses hierarchical clustering, Voronoi diagrams, and storyline visualizations to help experts explore various attributes and time scales in the data.

35 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The proposed framework can identify optimal evacuation plans using decision points, which control the ratio of agents that select a particular route at a specific spatial location based on a quantitatively validated metric for evacuation performance.
Abstract: Evacuation planning is an important and difficult task in building design. The proposed framework can identify optimal evacuation plans using decision points, which control the ratio of agents that select a particular route at a specific spatial location. The authors optimize these ratios to achieve the best evacuation based on a quantitatively validated metric for evacuation performance. This metric captures many of the important aspects of an evacuation: total evacuation time, average evacuation time, agent speed, and local agent density. The proposed approach was validated using a night club model that incorporates real data from an actual evacuation.

33 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The ANALYTiC web-based interactive tool visually guides users through this annotation process and can minimize the set of trajectories to be annotated while preserving good performance measures.
Abstract: The increasing availability and use of positioning devices has resulted in large volumes of trajectory data. However, semantic annotations for such data are typically added by domain experts, which is a time-consuming task. Machine-learning algorithms can help infer semantic annotations from trajectory data by learning from sets of labeled data. Specifically, active learning approaches can minimize the set of trajectories to be annotated while preserving good performance measures. The ANALYTiC web-based interactive tool visually guides users through this annotation process.

31 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The SurfCuit system integrates circuits into 3D prints by mounting them on the printed surface, allowing users to build complex, highly conductive circuit patterns for consumer-level desktop fused decomposition modeling (FDM) 3D printers and thus expediting the process of circuit construction for 3D models.
Abstract: The SurfCuit system integrates circuits into 3D prints by mounting them on the printed surface. SurfCuit does not require tedious circuit casing design or expensive setups, allowing users to build complex, highly conductive circuit patterns for consumer-level desktop fused decomposition modeling (FDM) 3D printers and thus expediting the process of circuit construction for 3D models.https://extras.computer.org/extra/mcg2017030052s1.mp4

29 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The goal is to better understand how users interact with sampling to enable wider adoption of sampling for scalable visual analytics.
Abstract: Sampling is becoming an essential tool for scalable interactive visual analysis. After outlining prior work by the database community on sampling for visualization of aggregation queries, this article considers how these results might be improved and extended to a broader setting. The goal is to better understand how users interact with sampling to enable wider adoption of sampling for scalable visual analytics.

28 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors envision the pathways for four different aspects of a theoretic foundation: taxonomies and ontologies, principles and guidelines, conceptual models and theoretic frameworks, and quantitative laws and theoretIC systems.
Abstract: There is little doubt that having a theoretic foundation will benefit the field of visualization, including its main subfields. Because there has been a substantial amount of work on taxonomies and conceptual models in the visualization literature and some recent work on theoretic frameworks, such a theoretic foundation is not a foolish or impractical ambition. This article asks, “How can we build a theoretic foundation for visualization collectively as a community?” The authors envision the pathways for four different aspects of a theoretic foundation: taxonomies and ontologies, principles and guidelines, conceptual models and theoretic frameworks, and quantitative laws and theoretic systems.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A machine-learning-based approach can compactly represent sky illumination from both existing analytic sky models and from captured environment maps to approximate the captured lighting at a significantly reduced memory cost and enable smooth transitions of sky lighting to be created from a small set of environment maps captured at discrete times of day.
Abstract: Sky illumination is responsible for much of the lighting in a virtual environment. A machine-learning-based approach can compactly represent sky illumination from both existing analytic sky models and from captured environment maps. The proposed approach can approximate the captured lighting at a significantly reduced memory cost and enable smooth transitions of sky lighting to be created from a small set of environment maps captured at discrete times of day. The author's results demonstrate accuracy close to the ground truth for both analytical and capture-based methods. The approach has a low runtime overhead, so it can be used as a generic approach for both offline and real-time applications.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article discusses how to exploit ambiguous sensorial situations to generate new kinds of percept using three types of examples: pseudo-haptic effects, self-motion sensations, and body-ownership illusions.
Abstract: Virtual reality is an immersive experience based on computer-generated stimulations perceived with multiple sensory channels. It is possible to manipulate these sensory stimulations independently and create conflicting situations in which, for instance, vision and touch are spatially and/or temporally inconsistent. This article discusses how to exploit these ambiguous sensorial situations to generate new kinds of percept using three types of examples: pseudo-haptic effects, self-motion sensations, and body-ownership illusions.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors designed Urban Space Explorer, a visual analytics system that utilizes mobile social media to enable interactive exploration of public-space-related activity along spatial, temporal, and semantic dimensions.
Abstract: Understanding people’s behavior is fundamental to many planning professions (including transportation, community development, economic development, and urban design) that rely on data about frequently traveled routes, places, and social and cultural practices. Based on the results of a practitioner survey, the authors designed Urban Space Explorer, a visual analytics system that utilizes mobile social media to enable interactive exploration of public-space-related activity along spatial, temporal, and semantic dimensions.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The articles selected for this special issue represent a mix of theoretical approaches and novel applications of geographic data science.
Abstract: Data science methods and approaches address all stages of transition from data to knowledge and action Visualization of this data is essential for human understanding of the subject under study, analytical reasoning about it, and generating new knowledge Geographic data science deals with data that incorporates spatial and, often, temporal elements The articles selected for this special issue represent a mix of theoretical approaches and novel applications of geographic data science

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors exploited current VR and human-machine interface (HMI) technologies to develop an interactive, innovative, and attractive user experience called the Multisensory Apulia Touristic Experience (MATE).
Abstract: This article explores what it takes to make interactive computer graphics and VR attractive as a promotional vehicle, from the points of view of tourism agencies and the tourists themselves. The authors exploited current VR and human-machine interface (HMI) technologies to develop an interactive, innovative, and attractive user experience called the Multisensory Apulia Touristic Experience (MATE). The MATE system implements a natural gesture-based interface and multisensory stimuli, including visuals, audio, smells, and climate effects.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The web-based visualization VisAdapt tool was developed to help laypeople in the Nordic countries assess how anticipated climate change will impact their homes through a three-step visual process that helps them explore risks and identify adaptive actions specifically modified to their location and house type.
Abstract: The web-based visualization VisAdapt tool was developed to help laypeople in the Nordic countries assess how anticipated climate change will impact their homes. The tool guides users through a three-step visual process that helps them explore risks and identify adaptive actions specifically modified to their location and house type. This article walks through the tool's multistep, user-centered design process. Although VisAdapt's target end users are Nordic homeowners, the insights gained from the development process and the lessons learned from the project are applicable to a wide range of domains.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Three-dimensional (3D) spatial user interface technologies have the potential to make games more immersive and engaging and thus provide a better user experience and how to use them to optimize the gameplay experience is studied.
Abstract: Three-dimensional (3D) spatial user interface technologies have the potential to make games more immersive and engaging and thus provide a better user experience. Although technologies such as stereoscopic 3D display, head tracking, and gesture-based control are available for games, it is still unclear how their use affects gameplay and if there are any user performance benefits. The authors have conducted several experiments on these technologies in game environments to understand how they affect gameplay and how we can use them to optimize the gameplay experience.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors used a crowdsourcing methodology to create a virtual audience nonverbal behavior model and created a dataset of videos with virtual audiences containing varying behaviors to investigate how virtual audiences are perceived and which factors affect this perception.
Abstract: A growing body of evidence shows that virtual audiences are a valuable tool in the treatment of social anxiety, and recent works show that it also a useful in public-speaking training programs. However, little research has focused on how such audiences are perceived and on how the behavior of virtual audiences can be manipulated to create various types of stimuli. The authors used a crowdsourcing methodology to create a virtual audience nonverbal behavior model and, with it, created a dataset of videos with virtual audiences containing varying behaviors. Using this dataset, they investigated how virtual audiences are perceived and which factors affect this perception.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a visual tracking system can track and register object deformations in real time using a physically based formulation, despite the occlusions produced by the robotic system itself.
Abstract: One of the most challenging problems in robot-assisted surgical systems is to provide surgical realism at interactive simulation rates. The proposed visual tracking system can track and register object deformations in real time using a physically based formulation, despite the occlusions produced by the robotic system itself. The results obtained provide an accurate visual representation of the deformed solid and will thus enable new assistance approaches to help surgeons during surgical procedures.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: New methods and existing methods are needed to account for the specific goals and challenges in this emerging research area and an open-minded approach to empirical methods may help to gain a more realistic understanding of personal visualizations.
Abstract: Personal visualizations have the great potential to provide the benefits of visualizations to everyone in their everyday lives. Their diverse goals combined with the personal data they contain and the contexts in which they are being used, however, make their evaluation particularly challenging and call for a wider perspective on empirical approaches. We need to devise new methods and adapt existing methods from other fields to account for the specific goals and challenges in this emerging research area. An open-minded approach to empirical methods may help us gain a more realistic understanding of personal visualizations.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Current trends that favor application papers are surveyed, the benefits and contributions of this paper type are reviewed, and their assessment in the review process is discussed.
Abstract: Application-oriented papers provide an important way to invigorate and cross-pollinate the visualization field, but the exact criteria for judging an application paper's merit remain an open question. This article builds on a panel at the 2016 IEEE Visualization Conference entitled "Application Papers: What Are They, and How Should They Be Evaluated?" that sought to gain a better understanding of prevalent views in the visualization community. This article surveys current trends that favor application papers, reviews the benefits and contributions of this paper type, and discusses their assessment in the review process. It concludes with recommendations to ensure that the visualization community is more inclusive to application papers.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The WikiTopReader system as mentioned in this paper, a reader of Wikipedia page rank, lets users explore connections among top-viewed pages by connecting page-rank behaviors with page-link relations.
Abstract: Visual clutter is a common challenge when visualizing large rank time series data. WikiTopReader, a reader of Wikipedia page rank, lets users explore connections among top-viewed pages by connecting page-rank behaviors with page-link relations. Such a combination enhances the unweighted Wikipedia page-link network and focuses attention on the page of interest. A set of user evaluations shows that the system effectively represents evolving ranking patterns and page-wise correlation.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The proposed interface combines a mouse with the Leap Motion device to provide 3D input and drastically decreased the number of required operations and the task completion time, especially for novice users.
Abstract: The most time-consuming part of character animation is 3D character posing. Posing using a mouse is a slow and tedious task that involves sequences of selecting on-screen control handles and manipulating the handles to adjust character parameters, such as joint rotations and end effector positions. Thus, various 3D user interfaces have been proposed to make animating easier, but they typically provide less accuracy. The proposed interface combines a mouse with the Leap Motion device to provide 3D input. A usability study showed that users preferred the Leap Motion over a mouse as a 3D gestural input device. The Leap Motion drastically decreased the number of required operations and the task completion time, especially for novice users.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article provides an overview of the existing approaches and techniques for enlarging the walkable virtual space that use spatial manipulation for spatial compression because it is one of the most promising, but underexplored methods for nonintrusive user redirection in a limited physical space.
Abstract: In practice, real-world physical workspaces and technological limitations restrict the free and unlimited exploration of an arbitrary large-scale virtual environment. This article provides an overview of the existing approaches and techniques for enlarging the walkable virtual space. The authors specifically focus on the methods that use spatial manipulation for spatial compression because it is one of the most promising, but underexplored methods for nonintrusive user redirection in a limited physical space.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A virtual try-on system for prescription eyeglasses modifies an input video and virtually inserts prescriptions through image-based rendering, producing an output similar to a virtual mirror.
Abstract: Corrective lenses introduce distortion caused by the refraction effect, which changes the wear’s appearance. To give users a more realistic experience, a virtual try-on system for prescription eyeglasses modifies an input video and virtually inserts prescription eyeglasses, producing an output similar to a virtual mirror. The proposed system generates a 3D representation of the corrective lenses mounted into the eyeglasses frame and modifies the video sequence to virtually insert the eyeglasses through image-based rendering. Unlike existing virtual try-on systems, this approach simulates the refraction effects due to the corrective lens and takes into account reflections and shading.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This proposed approach includes a mechanism for attaching a set of 3D printed segments to produce a scalable model of the Earth to be used for visualizing multiresolution geospatial datasets.
Abstract: Geospatial datasets are too complex to easily visualize and understand on a computer screen. Combining digital fabrication with a discrete global grid system (DGGS) can produce physical models of the Earth for visualizing multiresolution geospatial datasets. This proposed approach includes a mechanism for attaching a set of 3D printed segments to produce a scalable model of the Earth. The authors have produced two models that support the attachment of different datasets both in 2D and 3D format.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: An evaluation of the authors’ decision model in terms of agent believability, the user’s feeling of co-presence, and overall game experience shows that the model can generate adaptive body behavior for virtual agents that is comparable to a human's, but the user and agent roles in each scenario strongly impact the user's perception of the agent.
Abstract: Subtle phenomena rooted in our body dynamics affect the reactive and evolutive parts of every human interaction. The authors’ decision model allows for adaptive physical interactions between a human and a virtual agent. This article presents an evaluation of that model in terms of agent believability, the user’s feeling of co-presence, and overall game experience. The results show that the model can generate adaptive body behavior for virtual agents that is comparable to a human’s, but the user and agent roles in each scenario strongly impact the user’s perception of the agent.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article describes a visualization tool for cosmological data resulting from dark-matter simulations that helps users explore all aspects of the data at once and receive more detailed information about structures of interest at any time.
Abstract: The winning entry of the 2015 IEEE Scientific Visualization Contest, this article describes a visualization tool for cosmological data resulting from dark-matter simulations. The proposed system helps users explore all aspects of the data at once and receive more detailed information about structures of interest at any time. Moreover, novel methods for visualizing and interactively exploring dark-matter halo substructures are proposed.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: As news migrates to mobile phones, media companies are turning to data visualization to wet readers' appetites for stories they can read at length on their home or work computers.
Abstract: As news migrates to mobile phones, media companies are turning to data visualization to wet readers' appetites for stories they can read at length on their home or work computers. Journalists are trained to write stories, not in statistics or coding, however. The big news organizations have the funds to hire computer graphics experts, but local news organizations need help.