Zebra Vis v0.2 - Instructions

Overview

When you start the application, a window will show with the default view (2D community geospatial view). The default window should like like the following

The bottom of the window displays a panel through which you can select the visualization mode, a filter specifying which communities/individuals to visualize, and a timeline that lets you select the time window over which data is visualized:



The blue slider specifies the beginning timestep, the red slider specifies the ending timestep. As you move the sliders, the visualization is updated interactively to reflect the specified time frame. Throughout the instructions, "specified time frame" refers to the time frame spanning the beginning and ending timesteps as specified the the two sliders.

Visualization Modes

To switch to a different visualization mode, click the "Visualization Mode" button. A popup menu will allow you to select one of three currently supported visualization modes:

Community movement over a 2D map:

This mode shows the movement of communities over a time window. Each community is encoded with a unique color. The movement of the community as a whole is visualized over the selected time frame. The sighting locations are drawn as circles, and the first sighting location (with in the time frame) is drawn as a push pin. A linear track is drawn between two consecutive sightings to represent the movement of community from one location to another. Controls Drag with RIGHT mouse button to pan the dataset Use the mouse wheel to zoom on/out. Or use up/down arrow keys on the keyboard to zoom in/out, respectively. Cycle through different maps using the 'm' key on your keyboard. Filter You can specify which communities you would like to show in the visualization by clicking the filter button. This brings up a dialog box that lets your check the communities you would like to see in the visualization. Note that by default the filter has all the communities unchecked, so you should check at least one community to see something. Note When looking at a map for the first time, panning and zooming might be slow in the beginning as the map data is being loaded from disk. Limitation This view shows the movement of the community as a whole, but does not show the movement of individuals. Individuals might move from one community to another, and this phenomena is not visualized here. One could look at the Affiliation Timeline along with this to see how individuals change their affiliaiton.

Community locations over a 3D terrain:

This mode shows the different sighting locations of communities over a 3D terrain model. A push pin marks the location and the color uniquely encodes the community ID, which is also displayed. Unlike the 2D visualization, there's no time ordering of the sightings, though only the sightings that fall with in the specified time frame are visualized. Controls Drag with RIGHT mouse button to rotate the view. Use mouse wheel to zoom in/out Drag with RIGHT mouse button while holding the SHIFT key to move the planar position of the observer within the space. Filter The filter allows you to specify which communities to visualize just like in the 2D communities visualization. Note The 3D zebra models here do not reflect the actual number of individuals at a particular sighting. Only one zebra model is drawn per sighting. So, it does not convey any information. Also, the size of the zebra model is not to scale with the map.

Affiliation timeline:

This is an abstract visualization mode that plots the community affiliation of individuals over the specified time frame. The color encodes the reproductive status of individuals. Individuals are represented using lines. Lines are grouped into rows that indicate the community to which the individual is affiliated. The color of the line encodes the reproductive status of an individual. If the individual changes its community affiliation during the specified time frame, the line "jumps" from one community to another. An individual can be affiliated to one community only at a give time step. The annotation on the left indicate the community ID. The rows are also labeled with individuals' IDs, as well as their sex. Controls Drag with RIGHT mouse button to pan the dataset Use the mouse wheel to zoom on/out. Filter The filter allows you to select which individual to show in the affiliation timeline.

Tiling

The visualization window can be divided into "tiles". Each tile can show a different visualization mode, and the the data can be visualized over a different time frame. Also, a different filter can be applied to each tile. By default, the application starts with one tile.

To split the current tile into two tiles, use H or V key for horizontal or vertical splitting, respectively. A splitting line appears and you can move the mouse pointer to adjust the position of the line. Click the left mouse button to confirm. The difference between horizontal and vertical splitting is illustrated below:

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Horizontal splitting

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2

Vertical splitting

You can move the splitting line simply by dragging it with the left mouse button. To close a tile, use the C key. The program will let you to choose which tile to close by shading the selected one. You can move the mouse pointer to specify the tile you'd like to close. Left click to confirm and close the selected tile.

Adjusting window size

The default window size is 1200 x 800 pixels. This can changed as follows.

• In Mac OS X, right click on the ZebraVis application, select Show Package Contents. Mac OS will open the Finder window and show you the contents. Go through the following directories: Contents -> MacOS -> -> LuaCode -> zebra. Double click on the config.lua. If Finder asks you to choose application, select "TextEdit". Look for the lines that say WINDOW_WIDTH and WINDOW_HEIGHT (should be near the top of the file). These two lines specify the width and height of the window respectively in pixels. Change them to the desired value. Save the file. Launch the ZebraVis application again by double clicking on it.

Unfortunately, due to limitation in the graphics library, the size of the window can not be changed in real-time. You have to close and restart the application for the changes to take effect. However, you can minimize and restore the window.