Scientific Visualization, Virtual Reality, Virtual Environments, Human Computer Interaction, Man Machine Communication, Presentation, Simulation
Virtual Environments (VEs) represent a powerful novel way of Man Machine Interaction. Scientific Visualization, on the other hand, copes with large amounts of numbers which are often hard to interpret. It is expected that new interaction techniques will enable applications of Scientific Visualization which have not even been thought of yet. The availability of Virtual Environment techniques has initiated discussions about the benefits of VEs for Scientific Visualization and also led to some experiments on VEs in Scientific Visualization.
This paper discusses the strengths and weaknesses of VE techniques regarding Scientific Visualization. Four examples of Scientific Visualization using Virtual Environments are reported. They include a visualization system for finite element and voxel data, the visualization of meteorological data for lay audiences, a training simulator for arthroscopic examinations, and sonification in a dataflow visualization system as well as in VEs.
We expect that the work reported here will promote research on a symbiosis of the two fields to the benefit of both of them.
Helmut Haase
(haase@igd.fhg.de),
Martin Göbel
(goebel@igd.fhg.de),
Peter Astheimer
(astheime@igd.fhg.de)
Kennet Karlsson
(karlsson@igd.fhg.de)
Florian Schröder
(schroede@igd.fhg.de)
Thomas Frühauf
(fruehauf)@igd.fhg.de,
Rolf Ziegler
(ziegler@igd.fhg.de)
