DevLan/vispubs huggingface dataset:
Using visualization in the archaeological excavations of a pre-Inca temple in Peru
Authors: Alan D. Kalvin, Alfredo Remy, Orlando Ardito, Kim Morla, Eduardo Nolasco, Jorge Prado, Regulo Franco, Antonio Murga, Guillermo Wiese
Published at Vis, 1996

We describe an on-going project that is using visualization as an indispensable tool for the restoration of the disintegrated ceiling of a ritual precinct that was discovered during archaeological excavations of a group of pre-Inca temples in Peru. This ceiling is unique-it is the only one ever found that has pictures painted on it, rather than being simply white-washed. The restoration of the ceiling, and the recovery of these iconographic figures will provide an unprecedented opportunity to study the culture of the Moche people who build and used these temples.
Virtual Workbench-a non-immersive virtual environment for visualizing and interacting with 3D objects for scientific visualization
Authors: Upul Obeysekare, Chas Williams, Jim Durbin, Lawrence J. Rosenblum, Robert Rosenberg, Fernando Grinstein, Ravi Ramamurthi, Alexandra Landsberg, William Sandberg
Published at Vis, 1996

The Virtual Workbench (VW) is a non-immersive virtual environment that allows users to view and interact with stereoscopic objects displayed on a workspace similar to a tabletop workspace used in day-to-day life. A VW is an ideal environment for collaborative work where several colleagues can gather around the table to study 3D virtual objects. The Virtual Reality laboratory at the Naval Research Laboratory has implemented the VW using a concept similar to (Froehlich et al., 1994). This paper investigates how the VW can be used as a non-immersive display device for understanding and interpreting complex objects encountered in the scientific visualization field. Different techniques for interacting with 3D visualization objects on the table and using VW as a display device for visualization are evaluated using several cases.
Visualization of Complex Models Using Dynamic Texture-based Simplification
Authors: Daniel G. Aliaga
Published at Vis, 1996

We are investigating methods for simplifying complex models for interactive visualizations using texture based representations. The paper presents a simplification method which dynamically "caches" distant geometry into textures and trades off accurate rendering of the distant geometry for performance. Smooth transitions and continuous borders are defined between the geometry and textures thus the representations can be switched without sudden jumps (as is the case with many current texturing techniques). All the computations for the transitions can be done a priori without the need to change the textures each frame thereafter.
Visualization of water quality data for the Chesapeake Bay
Authors: Adam B. Forgang, Bernd Hamann, Carl F. Cerco
Published at Vis, 1996

We discuss a visualization system for the comparison of simulated and measured water quality. The system extends SCIRT (Site Characterization Interactive Research Toolkit), an interactive system originally developed at the NSF Engineering Research Center for Computational Field Simulation at Mississippi State University. The ongoing study of the Chesapeake Bay presents research in 3D visualization of model-data comparisons.
Visualization over the World Wide Web and its application to environmental data
Authors: Jason D. Wood, Ken Brodlie, Helen Wright
Published at Vis, 1996

Explores the way in which data visualization systems, in particular modular visualization environments, can be used over the World Wide Web. The conventional approach is for the publisher of the data also to be responsible for creating the visualization, and posting it as an image on the Web. This leaves the viewer in a passive role, with no opportunity to analyse the data in any way. We look at different scenarios that occur as we transfer more responsibility for the creation of the visualization to the viewer, allowing visualization to be used for analysis as well as presentation. We have implemented one particular scenario, where the publisher mounts the raw data on the Web, and the viewer accesses this data through a modular visualization environment-in this case, IRIS Explorer. The visualization system is hosted by the publisher, but its fine control is the responsibility of the viewer. The picture is returned to the viewer as VRML, for exploration via a VRML viewer such as Webspace. We have applied this to air quality data which is posted on the Web hourly: through our system, the viewer selects what data to look at (e.g. species of pollutant, location, time period) and how to look at it-at any time and from anywhere on the Web.
Volume Thinning for Automatic Isosurface Propagation
Authors: Takayuki Itoh, Yasushi Yamaguchi 0001, Koji Koyamada
Published at Vis, 1996

An isosurface can be efficiently generated by visiting adjacent intersected cells in order, as if the isosurface were propagating itself. We previously proposed an extrema graph method (T. Itoh and K. Koyamada, 1995), which generates a graph connecting extremum points. The isosurface propagation starts from some of the intersected cells that are found both by visiting the cells through which arcs of the graph pass and by visiting the cells on the boundary of a volume. We propose an efficient method of searching for cells intersected by an isosurface. This method generates a volumetric skeleton. consisting of cells, like an extrema graph, by applying a thinning algorithm used in the image recognition area. Since it preserves the topological features of the volume and the connectivity of the extremum points, it necessarily intersects every isosurface. The method is more efficient than the extrema graph method, since it does not require that cells on the boundary be visited.
Volume tracking
Authors: Deborah Silver, Xin Wang
Published at Vis, 1996

3D time varying datasets are difficult to visualize and analyze because of the immense amount of data involved. This is especially true when the datasets are turbulent with many evolving amorphous regions, as it is difficult to observe patterns and follow regions of interest. We present our volume based feature tracking algorithm and discuss how it can be used to help visualize and analyze large time varying datasets. We also address efficiency issues in dealing with massive time varying datasets.
Wavelets applied to lossless compression and progressive transmission of floating point data in 3-D curvilinear grids
Authors: Aaron Trott, Robert J. Moorhead II, John McGinley
Published at Vis, 1996

A method of lossless compression using wavelets is presented that enables progressive transmission of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) data in PLOT3D format. The floating point data is first converted to double-precision floating point format to maintain adequate precision throughout the transform process. It is then transformed using Haar wavelets-four times in two spatial dimensions, twice in the third spatial dimension, and twice in time for a total compression factor of 64 times. The double precision format will maintain enough precision during the transform to keep the process lossless. Next, the transformed data is compressed using Huffman coding and transmitted progressively using spectral selection. This allows most of the information to be transmitted in the first pass. Details are transmitted in later passes which ultimately provide for lossless reconstruction of the original data.
Animating multidimensional scaling to visualize N-dimensional data sets
Authors: Chris Bentley, Matthew O. Ward
Published at InfoVis, 1996

Many techniques have been developed for visualizing multivariate (multidimensional) data. Most, if not all, are limited by the number of dimensions which can be effectively displayed. Multidimensional scaling (MDS) is an iterative non-linear technique for projecting n-D data down to a lower number of dimensions. This work presents extensions to MDS that enhance visualization of high-dimensional data sets. These extensions include animation, stochastic perturbation, and flow visualization techniques.
Data characterization for automatically visualizing heterogeneous information
Authors: Michelle X. Zhou, Steven K. Feiner
Published at InfoVis, 1996

Automated graphical generation systems should be able to design effective presentations for heterogeneous (quantitative and qualitative) information in static or interactive environments. When building such a system, it is important to thoroughly understand the presentation-related characteristics of domain-specific information. We define a data-analysis taxonomy that can be used to characterize heterogeneous information. In addition to capturing the presentation-related properties of data, our characterization takes into account the user's information-seeking goals and visual-interpretation preferences. We use automatically-generated examples from two different application domains to demonstrate the coverage of the proposed taxonomy and its utility for selecting effective graphical techniques.
DEPICT: Documents Evaluated as Pictures. Visualizing information using context vectors and self-organizing maps
Authors: David A. Rushall, Marc R. Ilgen
Published at InfoVis, 1996

HNC Software, Inc. has developed a system called DEPICT for visualizing the information content of large textual corpora. The system is built around two separate neural network methodologies: context vectors and self-organizing maps. Context vectors (CVs) are high dimensional information representations that encode the semantic content of the textual entities they represent. Self-organizing maps (SOMs) are capable of transforming an input, high dimensional signal space into a much lower (usually two or three) dimensional output space useful for visualization. Neither process requires human intervention, nor an external knowledge base. Together, these neural network techniques can be utilized to automatically identify the relevant information themes present in a corpus, and present those themes to the user in a intuitive visual form.
Distortion viewing techniques for 3-dimensional data
Authors: Sheelagh Carpendale, David J. Cowperthwaite, F. David Fracchia
Published at InfoVis, 1996

As the use of 3D information presentation becomes more prevalent, the need for effective viewing tools grows accordingly. Much work has been done in developing tools for 2D spaces which allow for detail in context views. We examine the extension of such 2D methods to 3D and explore the limitations encountered in accessing internal regions of the data with these methods. We then describe a novel solution to this problem of internal access with the introduction of a distortion function which creates a clear line of sight to the focus revealing sections previously obscured. The distortion is symmetric about the line of sight and is smoothly integrated back into the original 3D layout.
Dual multiresolution HyperSlice for multivariate data visualization
Authors: Pak Chung Wong, Andrew H. Crabb, R. Daniel Bergeron
Published at InfoVis, 1996

We present a new multiresolution visualization design which allows a user to control the physical data resolution as well as the logical display resolution of multivariate data. A system prototype is described which uses the HyperSlice representation. The notion of space projection in multivariate data is introduced. This process is coupled with wavelets to form a powerful tool for very large data visualization.
FINESSE: a financial information spreadsheet
Authors: Amitabh Varshney, Arie E. Kaufman
Published at InfoVis, 1996

We outline a spreadsheet-based system for visualization of real-time financial information. Our system permits the user to define arithmetic and presentation relationships amongst the various cells of the spreadsheet. The cells contain primitives that can be numbers, text, images, functions and graphics. Presenting financial information in this format allows its intended clients, the financial analysts, to work in the familiar environment of a spreadsheet and allows them the flexibility afforded by the powerful interface of the spreadsheet paradigm. In addition, our system permits real-time visualization of the financial data stream allowing its user to visually trade the changing market trends in two and three dimensions.
Geospatial metadata querying and visualization on the WWW using Java™ applets
Authors: Naim Alper, Chuck Stein
Published at InfoVis, 1996

This paper presents the query and visualization interfaces of the Master Environmental Library (MEL) system. MEL uses the World Wide Web (WWW) to make accessible distributed data whose metadata conform to the Federal Geographic Data Committee's (FGDC) content standards for digital geospatial metadata. The interfaces are implemented as Java/sup TM/ applets and are more intuitive, interactive and possess greater functionality than their Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) counterparts. As well as querying, the interface allows users to visualize and manage the list of query results so that users can more quickly discover the datasets of real interest. Several new tools used to visualize attributes of the metadata are presented.
Interactive visualization of multiway tables
Authors: Kenneth C. Cox, Dianne Hackborn
Published at InfoVis, 1996

Many business data visualization applications involve large databases with dozens of fields and millions of rows. Interactive visualization of these databases is difficult because of the large amount of data involved. We present a method of summarizing large databases which is well suited to interactive visualization. We illustrate this with a visualization tool for the domain of call billing data.
Minimally-immersive interactive volumetric information visualization
Authors: David S. Ebert, Chris Shaw 0002, Amen Zwa, Ethan L. Miller, D. Aaron Roberts
Published at InfoVis, 1996

This paper describes a minimally immersive volumetric interactive system for information visualization. The system, SFA, uses glyph-based volume rendering, enabling more information attributes to be visualized than traditional 2D and surface-based information visualization systems. Two-handed interaction and stereoscopic viewing combine to produce a minimally immersive interactive system that enhances the user's three-dimensional perception of the information space, capitalizing on the human visual system's pre-attentive learning capabilities to quickly analyze the displayed information. The paper describes the usefulness of this system for the visualization of document similarity within a corpus of textual documents. SFA allows the three-dimensional volumetric visualization, manipulation, navigation, and analysis of multivariate, time-varying information spaces, increasing the quantity and clarity of information conveyed from the visualization as compared to traditional 2D information systems.
On the semantics of interactive visualizations
Authors: Mei C. Chuah, Steven F. Roth
Published at InfoVis, 1996

Interactive techniques are powerful tools for manipulating visualizations to analyze, communicate and acquire information. This is especially true for large data sets or complex 3D visualizations. Although many new types of interaction have been introduced recently, very little work has been done on understanding what their components are, how they are related and how they can be combined. This paper begins to address these issues with a framework for classifying interactive visualizations. Our goal is a framework that will enable us to develop toolkits for assembling visualization interfaces both interactively and automatically.
Rapid prototyping of information visualizations using VANISH
Authors: Rick Kazman, S. Jeromy Carrière
Published at InfoVis, 1996

Discusses a software tool called VANISH (Visualizing And Navigating Information Structured Hierarchically), which supports the rapid prototyping of interactive 2D and 3D information visualizations. VANISH supports rapid prototyping through a special-purpose visual language called VaPL (VANISH Programming Language) tailored for visualizations, through a software architecture that insulates visualization-specific code from changes in both the domain being visualized and the presentation toolkit used, and through the reuse of visualization techniques between application domains. The generality of VANISH is established by showing how it is able to re-create a wide variety of "standard" visualization techniques. VANISH's support for prototyping is shown through an extended example, where we build a C++ class browser, exploring many visualization alternatives in the process.
Selection: 524,288 ways to say "this is interesting"
Authors: Graham J. Wills
Published at InfoVis, 1996

Visualization is a critical technology for understanding complex, data-rich systems. Effective visualizations make important features of the data immediately recognizable and enable the user to discover interesting and useful results by highlighting patterns. A key element of such systems is the ability to interact with displays of data by selecting a subset for further investigation. This operation is needed for use in linked-views systems and in drill-down analysis. It is a common manipulation in many other systems. It is as ubiquitous as selecting icons in a desktop GUI. It is therefore surprising to note that little research has been done on how selection can be implemented. This paper addresses this omission, presenting a taxonomy for selection mechanisms and discussing the interactions between branches of the taxonomy. Our suggestion of 524,288 possible systems [2/sup 16/ operation systems/spl times/2 (memory/memoryless)/spl times/2 (data-dependent/independent)/spl times/2 (brush/lasso)] is more in fun than serious, as within the taxonomy there are many different choices that can be made. This framework is the result of considering both the current state of the art and historical antecedents.
Techniques for non-linear magnification transformations
Authors: Alan Keahey, Edward L. Robertson
Published at InfoVis, 1996

This paper presents efficient methods for implementing general non-linear magnification transformations. Techniques are provided for: combining linear and non-linear magnifications, constraining the domain of magnifications, combining multiple transformations, and smoothly interpolating between magnified and normal views. In addition, piecewise linear methods are introduced which allow greater efficiency and expressiveness than their continuous counterparts.
Towards rich information landscapes for visualising structured Web spaces
Authors: Keith Andrews, Michael Pichler, Peter Wolf
Published at InfoVis, 1996

The Harmony browser for the Hyper-G Web server utilises Hyper-G's rich data model to provide a number of tightly-coupled, two- and three-dimensional visualisation and navigational facilities. In particular the Harmony Information Landscape visualises the hierarchical structure of Hyper-G spaces upon a plane in three-dimensional space. The Harmony Information Landscape has now been extended to display a combined structure and link map by selectively superimposing hyperlink relationships in the vertical dimension above and below the hierarchy map. In addition, documents returned by search queries may be selectively "plotted" in the landscape, indicating their whereabouts in a broader context, and several sets of 3D icons are available for representing the various document types.
Visage: a user interface environment for exploring information
Authors: Steven F. Roth, Peter Lucas 0002, Jeffrey Senn, Cristina C. Gomberg, Michael B. Burks, Philip J. Stroffolino, John A. Kolojechick, Carolyn Dunmire
Published at InfoVis, 1996

Visage is a prototype user interface environment for exploring and analyzing information. It represents an approach to coordinating multiple visualizations, analysis and presentation tools in data-intensive domains. Visage is based on an information-centric approach to user interface design which strives to eliminate impediments to direct user access to information objects across applications and visualizations. Visage consists of a set of data manipulation operations, an intelligent system for generating a wide variety of data visualizations (SAGE) and a briefing tool that supports the conversion of visual displays used during exploration into interactive presentation slides. This paper presents the user interface components and styles of interaction that are central to Visage's information-centric approach.
Visualizing a tennis match
Authors: Liqun Jin, David C. Banks
Published at InfoVis, 1996

This paper describes our work on visualizing the information of a tennis match. We use competition trees to organize the information of a tennis match and visualize the competition trees by the top-nesting layered maps with translucent colored layers. We create iconic representations to describe the detailed information of athletic events in an intuitive manner. Specialized views of the information are displayed by applying multiple Magic Lens filters on the top-nesting layered maps. The dynamic nature of the tennis match is depicted by the time-varying display. The approach we present in this paper can be used to visualize other sports information, information with competition property, or information with hierarchical structure.
Visualizing the global topology of the MBone
Authors: Tamara Munzner, Eric Hoffman, Kimberly C. Claffy, Bill Fenner
Published at InfoVis, 1996

We present a case study of visualizing the global topology of the Internet MBone. The MBone is the Internet's multicast backbone. Multicast is the most efficient way of distributing data from one sender to multiple receivers with minimal packet duplication. Developed and initially deployed by researchers within the Internet community, the MBone has been extremely popular for efficient transmission across the Internet of real-time video and audio streams such as conferences, meetings, congressional sessions, and NASA shuttle launches. The MBone, like the Internet itself grew exponentially with no central authority. The resulting suboptimal topology is of growing concern to network providers and the multicast research community. We create a geographic representation of the tunnel structure as arcs on a globe by resolving the latitude and longitude of MBone routers. The interactive 3D maps permit an immediate understanding of the global structure unavailable from the data in its original form as lines of text with only hostnames and IP addresses. Data visualization techniques such as grouping and thresholding allow further analysis of specific aspects of the MBone topology. We distribute the interactive 3D maps through the World-Wide Web using the VRML file format thus allowing network maintainers throughout the world to analyze the structure move effectively than would be possible with still pictures or pre-made videos.
Visualizing the results of multimedia Web search engines
Authors: Sougata Mukherjea, Kyoji Hirata, Yoshinori Hara
Published at InfoVis, 1996

Search engines are very useful because they allow the user to retrieve documents of interest from the World-Wide Web. However, if the user's query results in lots of records to be retrieved, just listing the results is not very user-friendly. We are developing a system that allows the visualization of the results. Visualizations of both text and image search are generated on the fly based on the search results.