[Paraview-developers] Interacting with our data and an HTC Vive

[David Tuckey]

Hello, 

I am currently working on scientific visualisation in virtual reality 
and am looking for ways to enhance the Paraview capabilities in this 
domain. I am using for my current tests a HTC Vive, but I am considering 
using a zSpace or a workbench in further works. The first goal is to be 
able to grab a plane and move it around in the virtual world to do live 
clipping of the objects, or move around a point to display live the 
streamlines at its location. 

A problem I am facing is that when objects in the scene are at the same 
location, I am never sure which one I will grab. Also while doing tests 
on VTK with OpenVR enabled, I could move around the representation of a 
basic vtkPlaneWidget without any effect on the position of it's bouding 
points or normal vector. 

I have two solutions in mind. 

1) The first solution is to modify ParaView's (and so VTK's) OpenVR 
scripts to allow better interaction and live pipeline modification. I am 
new to VTK/ParaView source code, but I guess that would mean modifying 
the vtkOpenVRRenderWindowInteractor, the vtkRenderWindowInteractor3D and 
a few other interaction classes. Developping ParaView's built in OpenVR 
solution may reveal itself difficult for specific interaction tasks. Do 
you have any idea of where I should start from ? 

2) The second solution would be to transfer the geometries after each 
modification to another software (such as a Unity pre-built scene), do 
the interaction in this software, and send back to ParaView the 
modification instructions. I thought I could archive this by using 
sockets in a Python script. Developping a new application on Unity 
allows easier interaction and the use on different hardware, but adds a 
new communication steps that could slow down the process. Do you have 
any advice about that ? 

I am not sure which one of the two solutions is the best. 

Thank you for any help. 


David Tuckey 
Student at Ecole Centrale de Nantes 
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