Analysis of Visualisation and Interaction Tools Authors

This document provides an in-depth analysis of visualization and interaction tools employed in the context of Virtual Museum. This analysis is required to identify and design the tools and the different components that will be part of the Common Implementation Framework (CIF). The CIF will be the base of the web-based services and tools to support the development of Virtual Museums with particular attention to online Virtual Museum.The main goal is to provide to the stakeholders and developers an useful platform to support and help them in the development of their projects, despite the nature of the project itself. The design of the Common Implementation Framework (CIF) is based on an analysis of the typical workflow ofthe V-MUST partners and their perceived limitations of current technologies. This document is based also on the results of the V-MUST technical questionnaire (presented in the Deliverable 4.1). Based on these two source of information, we have selected some important tools (mainly visualization tools) and services and we elaborate some first guidelines and ideas for the design and development of the CIF, that shall provide a technological foundation for the V-MUST Platform, together with the V-MUST repository/repositories and the additional services defined in the WP4. Two state of the art reports, one about user interface design and another one about visualization technologies have been also provided in this document

A WebGL application based on BIM IFC

Dissertação apresentada à Universidade Fernando Pessoa como partes dos requisitos para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Informática, ramo de Computação MóvelThe possibility of displaying high performance 3D accelerated graphics in the browser is seen as an obstacle to the conversion of applications to the web. The release of WebGL made Web3D gain new strength to overcome that obstacle. Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) tools are a type of applications that could benefit with this advance. In the AEC industry, there is a standard candidate for Building Information Modelling (BIM), called Industry Foundation Classes (IFC). This data model promotes interoperability between AEC tools, giving a common format to the applications. This work comes from the need of redesigning a legacy application that allows the user to design, display and calculate building structures. Focusing on the displaying of building structures, this work merges IFC and WebGL into an application, to replicate in a modern way the legacy application capabilities. This is done by developing a server module that processes the IFC data model and a client module that displays that model in a WebGL environment. The result is a prototype web application capable of displaying 3D IFC building models in the browser without plug-ins. A possibilidade de visualização de gráficos acelerados 3D de alto desempenho no navegador ainda é visto como um obstáculo na migração de aplicações para a web. O lançamento do WebGL fez o Web3D ganhar uma nova força para superar esse obstáculo. As ferramentas de Arquitetura, Engenharia e Construção (AEC) são um tipo de aplicações que podem beneficiar com este avanço. Na indústria AEC, há um candidato a padrão para Building Information Modelling (BIM), chamado de Industry Foundation Classes (IFC). Este modelo de dados promove a interoperabilidade entre as ferramentas de AEC, fornecendo um formato comum às aplicações. Este trabalho surge da necessidade de redesenhar uma aplicação legada que permite ao o utilizador projetar, visualizar e calcular estruturas de edifícios. Focando na visualização de estruturas de edifícios, este trabalho funde o IFC e o WebGL numa aplicação, para replicar de forma moderna as capacidades da aplicação legada. Isto é feito através do desenvolvimento de um módulo de servidor que processa o modelo de dados IFC e um módulo de cliente que mostra esse modelo num ambiente WebGL. O resultado é um protótipo duma aplicação web capaz de visualizar modelos 3D de edifícios em formato IFC no browser sem plug-ins

Adaptivity of 3D web content in web-based virtual museums : a quality of service and quality of experience perspective

The 3D Web emerged as an agglomeration of technologies that brought the third dimension to the World Wide Web. Its forms spanned from being systems with limited 3D capabilities to complete and complex Web-Based Virtual Worlds. The advent of the 3D Web provided great opportunities to museums by giving them an innovative medium to disseminate collections' information and associated interpretations in the form of digital artefacts, and virtual reconstructions thus leading to a new revolutionary way in cultural heritage curation, preservation and dissemination thereby reaching a wider audience. This audience consumes 3D Web material on a myriad of devices (mobile devices, tablets and personal computers) and network regimes (WiFi, 4G, 3G, etc.). Choreographing and presenting 3D Web components across all these heterogeneous platforms and network regimes present a significant challenge yet to overcome. The challenge is to achieve a good user Quality of Experience (QoE) across all these platforms. This means that different levels of fidelity of media may be appropriate. Therefore, servers hosting those media types need to adapt to the capabilities of a wide range of networks and devices. To achieve this, the research contributes the design and implementation of Hannibal, an adaptive QoS & QoE-aware engine that allows Web-Based Virtual Museums to deliver the best possible user experience across those platforms. In order to ensure effective adaptivity of 3D content, this research furthers the understanding of the 3D web in terms of Quality of Service (QoS) through empirical investigations studying how 3D Web components perform and what are their bottlenecks and in terms of QoE studying the subjective perception of fidelity of 3D Digital Heritage artefacts. Results of these experiments lead to the design and implementation of Hannibal

An open source virtual globe for android

Dissertação de mestrado em Engenharia InformáticaVirtual globes have a number of key bene ts as a platform for communicating and visualizing geospatial data over traditional technologies. Virtual globes have increased in popularity and several implementations are available that cater to di erent audiences from education to industry. Despite these advantages, an open source virtual globe solution is still not available for mobile environments. Our goal is the development on an open source globe for Android, able to receive 3D scenes from a W3DS server. We present the architecture and the implementation decisions. We choose to develop the virtual globe on top of osgEarth which takes advantage of the OpenSceneGraph toolkit. Based on this decision, we explain how osgEarth was extended to consume new 3D data sources and how it was ported to the Android platform. Porting to Android requires major changes in the OpenGL API usage. Embedded devices only support a subset of the OpenGL API. We provide a virtual globe application that runs natively on the Android operating system. It is implemented on top of the osgEarth framework. osgEarth was ported to Android and expanded to support additional features. Pointers to the source code repositories are provided. With the work developed in this project, mobile virtual globe solutions can be customized and deployed, providing powerful visualizations and more intuitive interactions.Nos últimos anos, aplicações de globo virtual sofreram um grande aumento na sua popularidade e proliferação. Este tipo de aplicação oferece um grande conjunto de vantagens em relação às soluções tradicionais para a visualização e interação com dados geoespaciais. Estas vantagens levaram a um elevado interesse na presença desta solução em ambientes móveis. No entanto, uma solução open source para globos virtuais em Android ainda não se encontra disponível. O objectivo principal deste trabalho é então disponibilizar em Android uma solução de globo virtual open source. O globo implementado terá também de ser capaz de consumir o serviço W3DS recentemente especi cado. Apresentamos a arquitectura da nossa solução e as escolhas realizadas. Escolhemos basear a nossa solução no osgEarth, framework de globos virtuais que recorre ao OpenSceneGraph para as suas necessidades de rendering. Esta decisão implicou um processo de porting destas libraries para Android, efectuando todas as adaptações necessárias. De especial importância a adaptação do código dos shaders responsáveis pelo rendering grá co, uma vez que em Android apenas há disponível o OpenGL ES, especi cação limitada do OpenGL. O osgEarth foi também expandido de forma a ser capaz de consumir o W3DS. Disponibilizamos uma solução de globo virtual que corre nativamente em Android e é capaz de consumir o W3DS. A framework osgEarth foi assim expandida com novas funcionalidades e passou também a estar disponivél para Android. Com o trabalho realizado, globos virtuais móveis podem ser personalizados e implementados fácilmente

Mobile 3D Visualization Techniques in Field Geology Education

Despite the fact that we are in the mobile computing age, student geologists still carry out geological fieldwork using centuries old tools and techniques. This thesis investigates the question “how can 3D visualization on smartphones and tablets help students learn during geological fieldwork?” To answer this question, the thesis first reviews the types of difficulty encountered by novice geologists, narrowing it down to one particular issue: the extrapolation of 2D geological features into the 3D real world. The tasks carried out by novice geologists during introductory fieldwork were analysed systemically. This thesis then explored how apps from Android and iOS app stores may be used in the field to carry out such tasks. The overall finding is that there is limited work focused on novice geologists' difficulties during fieldwork, particularly 2D to 3D extrapolation. Then, using a perception test, the options of representing a single strike and dip measurement in a 3D environment is explored. The results of the test was that there were more accurate methods to represent a measurement than a traditional symbol (e.g. a T-shape). Then, a hypothesis was evaluated which states that instead of using 2D geological maps alone, a 3D visualization of strike and dip measurements plotted on them can assist students in understanding geological structures. The thesis then outlines functionality of a prototype that can be used by higher education institutions as a foundation for a novice geologists' field app. Key findings of the present work are: there has been no apps developed with focus on issues faced by novice geologists doing fieldwork during the time of this study. There was only British Geological Survey's iGeology3D which was released at the time of the study which focused on 3D visualization of geological data to be used in the field. In a separate study an iPad2 was found to be accurate enough for taking strike and dip measurements. In a perception experiment a 3D visualization of strike and dip was deemed to be better for comprehending structural orientation of outcrops but found to be no better than other 2D shapes. Finally, an experiment comparing the use of 2D maps versus 2D maps overlaid with 3D visualization of structural data, the latter found to be more effective for structural interpretation by novice geologists

Application-driven visual computing towards industry 4.0 2018

245 p.La Tesis recoge contribuciones en tres campos: 1. Agentes Virtuales Interactivos: autónomos, modulares, escalables, ubicuos y atractivos para el usuario. Estos IVA pueden interactuar con los usuarios de manera natural.2. Entornos de RV/RA Inmersivos: RV en la planificación de la producción, el diseño de producto, la simulación de procesos, pruebas y verificación. El Operario Virtual muestra cómo la RV y los Co-bots pueden trabajar en un entorno seguro. En el Operario Aumentado la RA muestra información relevante al trabajador de una manera no intrusiva. 3. Gestión Interactiva de Modelos 3D: gestión online y visualización de modelos CAD multimedia, mediante conversión automática de modelos CAD a la Web. La tecnología Web3D permite la visualización e interacción de estos modelos en dispositivos móviles de baja potencia.Además, estas contribuciones han permitido analizar los desafíos presentados por Industry 4.0. La tesis ha contribuido a proporcionar una prueba de concepto para algunos de esos desafíos: en factores humanos, simulación, visualización e integración de modelos

Application-driven visual computing towards industry 4.0 2018

245 p.La Tesis recoge contribuciones en tres campos: 1. Agentes Virtuales Interactivos: autónomos, modulares, escalables, ubicuos y atractivos para el usuario. Estos IVA pueden interactuar con los usuarios de manera natural.2. Entornos de RV/RA Inmersivos: RV en la planificación de la producción, el diseño de producto, la simulación de procesos, pruebas y verificación. El Operario Virtual muestra cómo la RV y los Co-bots pueden trabajar en un entorno seguro. En el Operario Aumentado la RA muestra información relevante al trabajador de una manera no intrusiva. 3. Gestión Interactiva de Modelos 3D: gestión online y visualización de modelos CAD multimedia, mediante conversión automática de modelos CAD a la Web. La tecnología Web3D permite la visualización e interacción de estos modelos en dispositivos móviles de baja potencia.Además, estas contribuciones han permitido analizar los desafíos presentados por Industry 4.0. La tesis ha contribuido a proporcionar una prueba de concepto para algunos de esos desafíos: en factores humanos, simulación, visualización e integración de modelos

The video game asset pipeline - A pattern approach to visualization

Video games consist of virtual worlds modelled as an approximation of either a real or imaginary environment. The amount of content required to populate the environments for Triple-A (AAA) video games doubles every few years to satisfy the expectations of the end-users. For this reason, the art and design discipline now constitute the majority of those employed in a video game studio. The artists use Digital Content Creation (DCC) tools to design and create their content; tools not originally designed for video game asset creation. Ultimately the artists require to preview their content in the form of source assets in the runtime environment, the game engine, to ensure they provide an accurate rendering of their original vision. However, there exists a barrier to achieve this workflow; the original source assets are persisted in a proprietary format, information rich to handle future edits, and the final runtime environment requires the assets to be lightweight ready for fast and efficient loading into the game engine. The video game industry has solved this problem by introducing a fast and efficient workflow known as the asset pipeline. The asset pipeline is recognized within video games technology as a general reusable solution to the common problem of converting source assets into their final runtime form as expected by the runtime game engine. Although the asset pipeline defines a series of stages that all content must follow from inception to their final realization a single solution does not exist to satisfy all projects. Likewise, within the discourse of patterns, a pattern is defined as a general reusable solution to a problem operating under a certain context. Originating in the field of architecture (Alexander, 1979) patterns have now been discovered and mined in numerous domains including software engineering (Gamma et al., 1995). Within the field of software engineering patterns exists at several levels of abstraction including architectural, design-level and low-level idioms. The world of video games technology and patterns intersects in the form of one set of patterns identified by Nystrom (2014), although these are very much low-level idioms and certainly do not encompass the challenge of the asset pipeline as found in video game production. This research addresses this shortfall and formalizes the asset pipeline into a catalogue of patterns for use both within the video game industry and to satisfy the wider audience of interactive real-time visualization in general. Interactive real-time visualizations consist of both the navigation and viewing application, executing in a runtime environment, and the digital content providing the data source for the visualization. Their workflow production draws parallels with that of the video game industry. The designers of such visualizations use the iterative process of create, review and modify. Creation of the source asset within the DCC tool, preview within the visualization runtime and subsequent modification in the DCC tool. However, the video game industry is tempered by a number of problems hindering proliferation of the asset pipeline as a general reusable solution. The video game industry is shrouded in secrecy preventing the natural dissemination of information. Software developers operating within the industry are subject to Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) protecting intellectual property invested in software tools such as the asset pipeline. The video game industry is relatively young, being fifty years old, and as such a set of agreed-upon terms and their definition has been slow to develop. This is compounded by the asset pipeline technology operating at the fault line of two disciplines: the engineers developing the runtime and the artists creating digital content. In such an interdisciplinary field language barriers exist. The characteristics and properties of patterns address these problems. They identify, name and provide a common vocabulary for specific problem-solution abstractions. They capture expertise and make knowledge accessible to non-experts. The communication of which enables domain independent solutions.This novel research formalizes the asset pipeline into a catalogue of patterns consisting of an architectural pattern named the ASSET PIPELINE and the component patterns of DCC EXPORT, INTERMEDIATE FILE FORMAT and ASSET BUILD PROCESS. Under the iterative spiral model methodology aligned to the framework of the Pattern Languages of Programs(PLoP) workflow. This involves the unique approach of shepherding, pattern mining, a writers’ workshop and pattern writing. All of which culminated in the publication of the pattern catalogue in the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for wider consumption and use in further domains of visualization.The asset pipeline catalogue was instantiated and applied in two domains: architectural visualization (ArchViz) and graph visualization (GraphViz) under the process of sequential application of the pattern components. This resulted in real-time exploratory visualizations that not only validate the pattern application but serve for wider research opportunities in the future. Such opportunities include expansion of the pattern language, refinement of the instantiated visualizations, development of a software framework and further pattern mining in other avenues of games technology

Study of Augmented Reality based manufacturing for further integration of quality control 4.0: a systematic literature review

Augmented Reality (AR) has gradually become a mainstream technology enabling Industry 4.0 and its maturity has also grown over time. AR has been applied to support different processes on the shop-floor level, such as assembly, maintenance, etc. As various processes in manufacturing require high quality and near-zero error rates to ensure the demands and safety of end-users, AR can also equip operators with immersive interfaces to enhance productivity, accuracy and autonomy in the quality sector. However, there is currently no systematic review paper about AR technology enhancing the quality sector. The purpose of this paper is to conduct a systematic literature review (SLR) to conclude about the emerging interest in using AR as an assisting technology for the quality sector in an industry 4.0 context. Five research questions (RQs), with a set of selection criteria, are predefined to support the objectives of this SLR. In addition, different research databases are used for the paper identification phase following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) methodology to find the answers for the predefined RQs. It is found that, in spite of staying behind the assembly and maintenance sector in terms of AR-based solutions, there is a tendency towards interest in developing and implementing AR-assisted quality applications. There are three main categories of current AR-based solutions for quality sector, which are AR-based apps as a virtual Lean tool, AR-assisted metrology and AR-based solutions for in-line quality control. In this SLR, an AR architecture layer framework has been improved to classify articles into different layers which are finally integrated into a systematic design and development methodology for the development of long-term AR-based solutions for the quality sector in the future