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We report on the design, implementation and evaluation of , a framework for building immersive analytics (IA) solutions in Web-based Virtual Reality (VR), built upon WebVR, A-Frame, React and D3. The recent emergence of affordable VR interfaces have reignited the interest of researchers and developers in exploring new, immersive ways to visualize data. In particular, the use of open-standards web-based technologies for implementing VR in a browser facilitates the ubiquitous and platform-independent adoption of IA systems. Moreover, such technologies work in synergy with established visualization libraries, through the HTML document object model (DOM). We discuss high-level features of and present a preliminary user experience evaluation of one of our use cases.

Two different approaches for the preparation of novel cost-effective molecular haptic applications (Figure 1) are described. The former utilises Perl scripting within a commercial molecular modelling package to generate static / animated H3D scene graphs for haptic CPK space-filling atomic perception. Within the second approach, key chemical concepts such as reactivity, aciditity and periodicity can be investigated using prototype H3D user interfaces.

Haptics force-feedback technology is fast becoming a consumer product and no longer only found in research laboratories. The emergence of the budget Falcon device (Novint Technologies, Inc., USA) represents a key step in the dissemination of haptics technology as it offers this functionality to home users, in particular to games players. Haptics has the potential to revolutionise the Human Computer Interface if novel and creative software solutions can be found to utilise it. Currently developing for haptics requires low level programming knowledge, which is often a barrier to uptake. This paper looks at how haptics support can be integrated into an X3D authored virtual world using an open source haptics library via the Scene Authoring Interface (SAI). We supply a partial implementation of a Java wrapping to the HAPI open-source haptics library and provide a demonstration of its use within the Xj3D browser through SAI. This work is intended to contribute to a possible future haptics extension of the ISO X3D standard.

The Department of Chemistry and the School of Informatics at the University of Wales, Bangor are working together to create tools for the visualization of molecular quantum dynamics. This paper presents the results of our initial work. A prototype Molecular Visualiser (MV) application has been developed based on Web3D standards, plus extensions for support of haptic interaction. MV provides the user with visualizations of molecular systems, potential energy surfaces, and wavepacket dynamics. These can be displayed in a web browser using VRML, or be delivered to a virtual environment in which haptic properties have been assigned based on the molecular dynamics of the system. The use of MV for both research and teaching is discussed.