Abstract: A multi-user collaborative circular graphical user interface for displaying items includes a transformation engine responsive to external command, such as mouse clicks, for generating polar coordinates for the items, an asynchronous rendering engine for generating images of the items according to the polar coordinates, and a thread switching engine for controlling the rendering engine.

Abstract: An improvement to a voxel-based system to permit rapidly deforming volumetric objects made up of inhomogeneous material provides different material constraints assigned to different elements, with the constraints of a link between two neighboring elements being calculated from contributions of the two affected elements. The order in which neighbors of moved element are considered for a move determines where in the body information is propagated first. The processing order can therefore be used to model different direction-dependent propagation speeds in the material.