Book Image

OpenGL Data Visualization Cookbook

Book Image

OpenGL Data Visualization Cookbook

Overview of this book

OpenGL is a great multi-platform, cross-language, and hardware-accelerated graphics interface for visualizing large 2D and 3D datasets. Data visualization has become increasingly challenging using conventional approaches as datasets become larger and larger, especially with the Big Data evolution. From a mobile device to a sophisticated high-performance computing cluster, OpenGL libraries provide developers with an easy-to-use interface to create stunning visuals in 3D in real time for a wide range of interactive applications. This book provides a series of easy-to-follow, hands-on tutorials to create appealing OpenGL-based visualization tools with minimal development time. We will first illustrate how to quickly set up the development environment in Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Next, we will demonstrate how to visualize data for a wide range of applications using OpenGL, starting from simple 2D datasets to increasingly complex 3D datasets with more advanced techniques. Each chapter addresses different visualization problems encountered in real life and introduces the relevant OpenGL features and libraries in a modular fashion. By the end of this book, you will be equipped with the essential skills to develop a wide range of impressive OpenGL-based applications for your unique data visualization needs, on platforms ranging from conventional computers to the latest mobile/wearable devices.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
OpenGL Data Visualization Cookbook
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Introduction


In this chapter, we will demonstrate how to visualize data interactively using built-in motion sensors called Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) and the multi-touch interface on mobile devices. We will further explore the use of shader programs to accelerate computationally intensive operations to enable real-time visualization of 3D data with mobile graphics hardware. We will assume familiarity with the basic framework for building an Android-based OpenGL ES 3.0 application introduced in the previous chapter and add significantly more complexity in the implementation in this chapter to achieve interactive, real-time 3D visualization of a Gaussian function using both motion sensors and the multi-touch gesture interface. The final demo is designed to work on any Android-based mobile device with proper sensor hardware support.

Here, we will first introduce how to extract data directly from the IMUs and plot the real-time data stream acquired on an Android device. We will divide...