These files contain the HTML, PostScript and TROFF versions of my master's thesis in computer science, Four-Space Visualization of 4D Objects. The latest HTML version is a single & complete file: Four-Space_Visualization_of_4D_Objects.html.
In the field of scientific visualization, the term “four dimensional visualization” usually refers to the process of rendering a three dimensional field of scalar values. While this paradigm applies to many different data sets, there are also uses for visualizing data that correspond to actual four-dimensional structure. Four dimensional structures have typically been visualized via wireframe methods, but this process alone is usually insufficient for an intuitive understanding; all but the most simple datasets easily overwhelm the viewer. This research covers the visualization of four dimensional objects through wireframe methods with extended visualization cues, and through raytracing methods. Both the wireframe and raytracing methods employ true four-space viewing parameters and geometry. The raytracing approach easily solves the hidden surface and shadowing problems of 4D objects, and yields an image in the form of a three-dimensional field of RGB values, which can be rendered with a variety of existing methods. The 4D raytracer also supports true four-dimensional lighting, reflections and refractions.
You can find my thesis source file components in the following directories:
html/images/PostScript/PostScript/figures/troff/
I have also made my 4D wireframe viewer (wire4) and 4D raytracer (ray4) available in the public
domain, found in the parent directory.
The 4D wireframe viewer (wire4) was written to run on an SGI Iris workstation, and can read in
arbitrary 4D objects from a simple text file and display them interactively.
The 4D raytracer (ray4) should be able to run on any platform that supports C's floating point
library. The output is a 3D RGB image that can be displayed with a variety of methods.