This project will extend global visual display techniques with local visualization methods, which combine graphics with haptic (force feedback) displays in three areas:
1. Allow users to apply well-known local techniques (e.g. streamlines or releasing colored dyes) within a globally visualized display (created by line integral convolution (LIC), volume rendering, or feature extraction). 2. Develop haptic interfaces to complement the local visual methods for representing vector fields. These interfaces will be tested and compared with each other and with visual methods. 3. Integrate haptic and visual algorithms into a computational steering environment. This will allow for fast feedback upon changing visualization parameters, such as the location of a 3D, stream line advection widget or the method of haptic interaction.
The project will use a co-registered, semi-immersive environment consisting of a Fakespace Immersive Workbench and a large SenseAble Phantom 3.0 haptic device; other haptic devices may be added later. By co-registering haptics in the semi-immersive workspace, the user will have the ability to both see and feel the field under study.
