{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/advanced-data-visualization-in-astrophysics","title":"Advanced Data Visualization in Astrophysics: the X3D Pathway","arxiv_id":"1510.02796","date":"2015-10-09","proceeding":null,"authors":["F. P. A. Vogt","C. I. Owen","L. Verdes-Montenegro","S. Borthakur"],"abstract":"Most modern astrophysical datasets are multi-dimensional; a characteristic that can nowadays generally be conserved and exploited scientifically during the data reduction/simulation and analysis cascades. Yet, the same multi-dimensional datasets are systematically cropped, sliced and/or projected to printable two-dimensional (2-D) diagrams at the publication stage. In this article, we introduce the concept of the \"X3D pathway\" as a mean of simplifying and easing the access to data visualization and publication via three-dimensional (3-D) diagrams. The X3D pathway exploits the facts that 1) the X3D 3-D file format lies at the center of a product tree that includes interactive HTML documents, 3-D printing, and high-end animations, and 2) all high-impact-factor & peer-reviewed journals in Astrophysics are now published (some exclusively) online. We argue that the X3D standard is an ideal vector for sharing multi-dimensional datasets, as it provides direct access to a range of different data visualization techniques, is fully-open source, and is a well defined ISO standard. Unlike other earlier propositions to publish multi-dimensional datasets via 3-D diagrams, the X3D pathway is not tied to specific software (prone to rapid and unexpected evolution), but instead compatible with a range of open-source software already in use by our community. The interactive HTML branch of the X3D pathway is also actively supported by leading peer-reviewed journals in the field of Astrophysics. Finally, this article provides interested readers with a detailed set of practical astrophysical examples designed to act as a stepping stone towards the implementation of the X3D pathway for any other dataset.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.02796v1","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/1510.02796v1.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"links_only","authors_date_abstract":"arXiv metadata, CC0 1.0 (https://info.arxiv.org/help/license), from the Kaggle arXiv metadata snapshot of 2026-09-12"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"advanced-data-visualization-in-astrophysics","repo_url":"https://github.com/fpavogt/x3d-pathway","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":0,"framework":"none","reach":null},{"paper_slug":"advanced-data-visualization-in-astrophysics","repo_url":"https://github.com/ixakalabadie/visl3d","is_official":0,"mentioned_in_paper":0,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"none","reach":null}],"tasks":[],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"atlas_url":null,"mcp":null,"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers"},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}