Again we will use OmegaLib as the VR library. You should be able to do much of the work on your project from a laptop or desktop computer, but you should be sure to allow for enough time to test and refine your project in the CAVE2 and on the Rift.

Another common use of VR is to look at complex datasets where the patterns are more obvious in 3D, for example worldwide earthquake hypocenter (epicenter + depth) data.


To get a C on the project the user should be able to:

• Visualize all of the magnitude 6.0+ earthquake hypocenters for 2010-2014 for the entire planet (at some appropriate size). The user should start outside the Earth looking at the planet, but can move inside the planet if they wish.
  
• Show the outlines of the continents for context
  
• The user should be able to rotate the visualization to see the visualization from any viewpoint.
• Choose an appropriate depth scaling to highlight the 3D patterns of the hypocenters (the normal scale of the planet will not highlight these patterns)
  
• Zoom into and away from the visualization
• Ability to reset the view and the zoom level
  

To get a B you need to add ...

• Show all of the magnitude 6.0+ quakes since January 1, 2000.
• Create a menu that allows the viewer to see either the earthquakes for the entire planet or one of 5 parts of the planet (e.g. North America, Japan, etc) in detail by limiting the area being drawn and showing that area in more detail. Here is where its much easier to see how the quakes help outline the plate boundaries
  
• Color the points / boxes / spheres / sprites representing the earthquake hypocenters based on their magnitude
  
• Change the size of the scaling of the points / boxes / spheres / sprites representing the hypocenters through a menu
  
• Change the depth scaling through a menu and show what that depth scaling is in the scene
  
• Change which magnitude quakes are shown though a menu and have some text telling the viewer what magnitudes are being shown
• Show the outlines of the continents and countries for context
• Be able to turn on / off the outlines of the continents and countries from the menu
  
• Ability to choose to see the particular area of the planet from above, or from the side, from a menu
  

To get an A you need to add ...

• Choose whether to show earthquake magnitude by color or by size of the points / boxes / spheres / sprites from a menu
• Menu to filter which years of earthquakes are shown from 1950 to the present
  
• Play back the earthquakes through the given years and show them appearing day by day. Use audio to highlight the appearance of the earthquakes - bigger earthquakes should have stronger sounds
  
• Impress Me
  

Also note that there is a big difference between getting something working and getting it working well. The first is not that hard. The second takes much more time. You are expected to have things working well so be sure to allocate time to test out your project in CAVE2 and on the Rift. Make sure the user can see you world with a high enough frame rate (at least 15 fps), and that the models do not flicker or have missing sides.

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A good place to get data is from the USGS at http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/search/

for example you can generate a csv file with lines that look like:

time,latitude,longitude,depth,mag,magType,nst,gap,dmin,rms,net,id,updated,place,type
2014-04-01T23:46:47.260Z,-19.6097,-70.7691,25,8.2,mww,,23,0.609,0.66,us,usc000nzvd,2015-01-28T14:44:48.195Z,"94km NW of Iquique, Chile",earthquake

You will very likely want to convert the latitude and longitude values into X, Y, Z. You can do this as a pre-processing step or within your code.



There are a variety of ways to get outline data for countries and continents on different scales. There is a fairly nice shapefile dataset at
http://thematicmapping.org/downloads/world_borders.php
which gives you the border data plus name of the region and other data which makes it possible to get the bounding box for different regions for the B requirements.

Then you need to convert the shapefile to something you can use in OmegaLib and pyShp could help you there
https://github.com/GeospatialPython/pyshp/wiki

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Each student will also give a short demonstration about your project in-class and answer some questions about your work. Be sure to practice your presentation so you finish within the allotted time so everyone has equal time to present.