Poster Abstract

P4.6 Alexander Sivitilli (University of Cape Town)

Theme: Data visualisation from line plots to augmented & virtual reality

Virtual Reality and Immersive Collaborative Environments: the New Frontier for Big Data Visualisation

As part of its initiative to pioneer new methods in large data set interactivity, the Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy Visualisation Lab at the University of Cape Town is exploring the use of virtual reality technology to visualise and analyse astronomical data. The software suite currently under development has been designed to read from both sparse multi-dimensional catalogs and volume data cubes, rendering them in a room-scale immersive environment that allows the user to intuitively view, navigate around and interact with features in three dimensions.

This contribution will highlight how the software imports from common astronomy data formats and processes the information for loading into the Unity game engine. We typically invoke the use of down-sampling and custom foveated rendering to accommodate large sets. A stereoscopic representation of the data is then rendered using either billboarding or ray-marching GPU shaders.

Current major applications include the use by radio astronomers in reviewing source finding algorithm results for spectral HI data. This specific application will be released to the public as a stand-alone software at the end of 2020 and will include a user-friendly interface developed in conjunction with INAF-Catania. Other uses include inspecting extragalactic redshift surveys as well as viewing snapshots of cosmological and galaxy dynamics simulations.

We are also exploring features following the official release that include collaboration tools with multiple VR users and digital planetarium integration, time and motion representation, a richer assortment of analysis functionality, as well as applications beyond astronomical data sets, such as molecular biology.