Mustafa Saifee
MA Thesis
2018
VR-Viz: Visualization system for data visualization in VR
Recent years have seen fast growth in big data. The datasets are not only exponentially larger, but also more complex (multi-dimensional). Because of the scale and complexity of these datasets, their visualization poses significant challenges. As a solution, this thesis explores how virtual reality (VR) and 3D visualization can be used to visualize complex and large datasets, and proposes a visualization system for designing visualizations in VR.
First, this thesis examines concepts of information visualization, VR, and 3D information visualization. Next, it explores visualization systems for 3D visualization and three examples of information visualization in VR and discusses their successes and short comings. Finally, in order to make VR information visualization accessible to a wider audience, a tool is introduced to simplify the process of designing information visualization in VR for beginners. The tool can also be used as a quick prototyping tool by more advanced users.
VR-Viz provides high-level react components to generate 3D visualization in webVR. It combines A-Frame with React (for DOM manipulation) and D3 (for data visualizations) to generate visualization in VR. It provides a JSON syntax for generating visualizations (the concept is inspired from Vega-Lite)
Interactive examples can be seen and explored here: https://vr-viz.netlify.com/
Open source library can be found here: https://github.com/mustafasaifee42/VR-Viz
Link to thesis: https://aaltodoc.aalto.fi/handle/123456789/36113