Cavern Halos: Exploring spatial and nonspatial cosmological data in an immersive virtual environment

Abstract

We present the design and implementation of an immersive visual mining and analysis tool for cosmological data. The tool consists of an immersive linked multiview display which allows domain experts to interact with visual representations of spatial and nonspatial cosmology data. Nonspatial data is represented as time-aligned merger trees, and through a pixel-based heatmap. Spatial data is represented through GPU-accelerated point clouds and geometric primitives. The user can select a halo and visualize a 3D representation of the raw particles, as well as of the halos at the particular time stamp. We have demonstrated the tool to a senior staff member of the Adler Planetarium and report their feedback. The tool can assist researchers in the interaction navigation and mining of large scale cosmological simulation data.