Post-Euclidean Walkabout

July 1st, 1994 - July 15th, 1994

Categories: Applications, Visualization

About

This real-time interactive CAVE application takes you on a visit to the post-Euclidean geometry of Gauss, Riemann, Klein, Poincare, and Thurston. Here you can walk into a rectangular dodecahedron, a shape which is possible only in negatively curved hyperbolic space. With a wand, you can summon and play with the snail-shaped 3D shadows of soap films in positively curved elliptic space. You can see how to sew the edges of hyperbolic octagons together into the surface of a 2-holed donut. The CAVE becomes a spaceship you can navigate with the wand, as it glides through the phantasmic shapes that populate the 3-sphere.

The purpose of this project is to perfect persuasive visual and sonic environments in which to exhibit geometrical wonders and their startling metamorphoses, which interest research geometers. Convincing visualizations of multi-dimensional, time-varying geometrical structures are equally useful in applied and pure mathematics.

This application was a part of VROOM - the Virtual Reality Room event showcased at SIGGRAPH 94.