Visualisation of qualitative processes
Simon Hartley, Marc Cavazza, J-L. Lugrin, Mikael Le Bras · 2004
In this paper, we describe our approach to the visualisation of qualitative physics, which uses a 3D graphical engine to present the results of a qualitative simulation. The qualitative formalism we use for the simulation is Qualitative Process Theory. The choice of this qualitative reasoning formalism was due to the representation that exists within the formalism, which enables us to add interactions via the process’ preconditions. The visualization system we describe is developed using a game engine and takes advantage of its advanced graphical rendering system and its event-based system to provide interaction and a number of 3D graphical elements, which are used as the visualisation primitives. We use a virtual kitchen as a test environment. In this virtual world, we have implemented a library of physical processes for object behaviour and complex device behaviour all of which are visualised in user real-time (where appropriate). After a presentation of the system architecture and its implementation, we discuss example results from the system. This approach has potential applications in virtual laboratories and for virtual prototyping.