Virtual Galaxy
Motivation. Summer research project that extended into fall quarter. A collaboration between two departments on campus, Informatics (in the School of Information and Computer Science) and Astrophysics (in the School of Physical Sciences). The data set was provided by the astrophysicists in HDF5 format. I was tasked with visualizing that dataset in Unity.
Technology. The use of Unity was my project advisor's idea. I wrote a Python script to extract a subset of data points and put it into XML format. Then, I used C# within Unity to plot the data points in 3D space. I added some interactivity based on popular game controls (WASD movement keys and mouse click-drag to adjust camera angle) and displayed potential features like adding more data points (1 on number row), removing data points (2), changing the color of the data points to red (3) or white (4).
Technology. The use of Unity was my project advisor's idea. I wrote a Python script to extract a subset of data points and put it into XML format. Then, I used C# within Unity to plot the data points in 3D space. I added some interactivity based on popular game controls (WASD movement keys and mouse click-drag to adjust camera angle) and displayed potential features like adding more data points (1 on number row), removing data points (2), changing the color of the data points to red (3) or white (4).