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

Part I – handling multi-touch interface and motion sensor inputs


Now that we have introduced the basics of handling sensor inputs, we will develop an interactive, sensor-based data visualization tool. In addition to using motion sensors, we will introduce a multi-touch interface for user interaction. The following is a preview of the final application, integrating all the elements in this chapter:

In this section, we will focus solely on the Java side of the implementation and the native code will be described in part II. The following class diagram illustrates the various components of the Java code (part I) that provide the basic interface for user interaction on the mobile device and demonstrates how the native code (part II) completes the entire implementation:

How to do it…

First, we will create the core Java source files that are essential to an Android application. These files serve as a wrapper for our OpenGL ES 3.0 native code. The code structure is based on the gl3jni package described...