Future research

The initial attempt to develop interactive VRML visualizations for the DLMF has been very successful. Other DLMF project members are pleased about the results to date and have agreed to work closely with us in determining how and where visualization can best be used in the DLMF. We are already developing more efficient contour plotting code to facilitate the expansion of the cutting planes to the Z direction. Also, we are experimenting with the use of a slider bar to give the user more control over the location of the cutting plane. Another area where more research is needed is in the development of efficient clipping routines. This will especially be a problem when we begin looking at visualizations of functions like the Gamma function where the domain of computation will contain holes. Each chapter will produce new challenges, but the hope is that much of what we are learning now can be easily applied to creating suitable visualizations for the other chapters.