GeoModelExplorer: improving interactive 3D geometry visualization tool based on Qt3D

Interactive visualization can provide intuitive insights for experiment setups and results in many domains, including High Energy Physics. Therefore, Virtual Point1 (VP1) was developed by ATLAS for 3D event display. Nevertheless, it seems a pity that it is based on an old graphics engine(OpenInventor) and resides in a big project(full ATLAS experiment software stack) with many dependencies.

To get free of these limitations, GeoModelExplorer, a super-lighter version of VP1 has been developed, with a strong focus on the visualization of geometry data. Some of the important next steps are to replace the old 3D engine, improve existing functions and add more features. All of them are waiting for development.

In this project, I will take these steps one by one, integrate the modern graphics engine Qt3D, improve the geometry rendering effects, extend the mesh I/O abilities, and add smooth animation for view inspections. There will be a large amount of design and engineering work but I will take extreme care. This project will eventually make contributions as part of the current software modernization effort in ATLAS.