A Transparently Scalable Visualization Architecture for Exploring the Universe

Abstract

Modern astronomical instruments produce enormous amounts of three-dimensional data describing the physical Universe. The currently available data sets range from the solar system to nearby stars and portions of the Milky Way Galaxy, including the interstellar medium and some extrasolar planets, and extend out to include galaxies billions of light years away. Because of its gigantic scale and the fact that it is dominated by empty space, modeling and rendering the Universe is very different from modeling and rendering ordinary three-dimensional virtual worlds at human scales. Our purpose is to introduce a comprehensive approach to an architecture solving this visualization problem that encompasses the entire Universe while seeking to be as scale-neutral as possible. One key element is the representation of model-rendering procedures using power scaled coordinates (PSC), along with various PSC-based techniques that we have devised to generalize and optimize the conventional graphics framework to the scale domains of astronomical visualization. Employing this architecture, we have developed an assortment of scale-independent modeling and rendering methods for a large variety of astronomical models, and have demonstrated scale-insensitive interactive visualizations of the physical Universe covering scales ranging from human scale to the Earth, to the solar system, to the Milky Way Galaxy, and to the entire observable Universe.

Extending Life Concepts to Complex Systems

“…The proposal would then generate a scenario in which billions of 'living things' would be continually coming to 'life' and 'dying' or 'tipping' (without necessarily 'reproducing'). This would occur at each and every scale in Nature, from 10 -35 m to 10 27 m [66] and from the life span of the Universe to that of the tiniest spark, given the perpetual renewal and modification of relationships in both the material and immaterial worlds.…”

Globe Browsing: Contextualized Spatio-Temporal Planetary Surface Visualization

“…Hanson et al [27] introduced the concept of power scaled coordinates (PSC) to handle the large numbers for astronomical distances, and subsequently Fu et al [24] categorized the problem of large scale navigation and positioning. Fu and Hanson also introduced a depth buffer remapping to cover a wider range of distances than possible with a fixed point depth buffer and conventional near and far planes [23]. In our presented work we use the Dynamic Scene Graph, proposed by Axelsson et al [6], as it allows for seamless navigation across large distances without loss of precision.…”

Visualizing Large-Scale Uncertainty in Astrophysical Data

“…In our own recent work, Hanson et al [17,19] proposed a visualization framework for illustrating the context of time in cosmological data, Li et al [29] developed a scalable WIM (world-in-miniature) user interface for facilitating the efficient exploration of large-scale astrophysical environments, and Fu et al [13] proposed a transparently scalable visualization architecture for modeling and rendering astronomical models across large-scale astrophysical spaces. However, it is worth noting that, except for primitive error bars constructed to show positional uncertainty, see [13], comprehensive visual representations of data uncertainty are basically absent from the bodies of astronomy visualization work mentioned thus far.…”

“…However, it is worth noting that, except for primitive error bars constructed to show positional uncertainty, see [13], comprehensive visual representations of data uncertainty are basically absent from the bodies of astronomy visualization work mentioned thus far.…”

“…Mathematically, given a power-scaled coordinate (PSC for short), say p = (x, y, z, s) (note that PSC's are defined in our previous work [13], where p represents the three-dimensional position (x, y, z) · 10 s ), the log-sky visualization mode transforms p using the following mapping:…”