Flexible Interaction with Large Point-Based Datasets

Abstract

We present an application for interacting with large, point-based datasets built with commodity off-the-shelf hardware. Our system works on ordinary workstations with mouse and keyboard interaction as well as on immersive multi-head VR systems with tracked input devices. This approach allows thermodynamics and astrophysics researchers to interactively navigate, filter and inspect large datasets that result from particle-based simulations as used in those areas. We make use of an adaptive, hierarchical rendering approach and extend its data structures to optimize the interaction performance to be usable with datasets of hundreds of thousands of particles. We prove the validity of our concepts with informal user studies both in the application area and the computer science context.