Smooth haptic interaction from discontinuous simulation data.

When a physical simulation that relies on haptic interaction is temporarily paused due to e.g. visualization, noticeable discontinuities are introduced in the interaction as well as the haptic-feedback. The source of this problem is a discrepancy between the notion of time in the simulation and in the real world. In this paper we analyze the general problem of executing simulation steps that each represent a constant amount of simulation time but are distributed non-uniformly in real world time. We have devised a solution that realigns the two notions of time, hereby insuring smooth interaction data and haptic feedback.