3D Occlusion Management - Challenges and Techniques

Niklas Elmqvist
Laboratoire de Recherche en Informatique de l'Université Paris-Sud

Faculty Candidate

Friday 9th March 2007
11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Fuller Labs 320

Screen real estate is a prime commodity for all large-scale visualization applications --- we never seem to be able to get enough pixels! Regardless of physical display size, there always comes a time when we run out and our visual objects will start overlapping each other on the screen. In this talk, I will present the research area of 3D occlusion management, where we aim to reduce (or even eliminate) this occlusion effect. Four techniques will be discussed: virtual X-ray vision, view projection animation, the BalloonProbe interactive exploder, and 3D navigation guidance. These techniques have been verified through user experiments involving over 100 human subjects to promote significantly more efficiency and accuracy than standard 3D navigation controls such as flying and walking.

______

Dr. Niklas Elmqvist is a postdoctoral researcher at the IN-SITU lab of INRIA Futurs at the Université Paris-Sud in Paris, France. His research interests include information visualization, human-computer interaction, and applied 3D computer graphics. Previously he was with the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology, where he received his PhD.

Host: Michael Gennert

Refreshments will be served.