Our paper about the use of several coordinated views for exploring complex spatial data has been published in the Information journal [1]. It is a followup and and extension to last winter paper [2].
References
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Exploring Multiple And Coordinated Views For Multilayered Geospatial Data In Virtual Reality
Spur, Maxim,
Tourre, Vincent,
David, Erwan,
Moreau, Guillaume,
and Le Callet, Patrick
Information
2020
[doi]
[pdf]
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MapStack: Exploring Multilayered Geospatial Data in Virtual Reality
Spur, Maxim,
Tourre, Vincent,
David, Erwan,
Moreau, Guillaume,
and Le Callet, Patrick
In Proc. 11th International Conference on Information Visualization Theory and Applications
2020
[Abs]
[pdf]
Virtual reality (VR) headsets offer a large and immersive workspace for displaying visualizations with stereoscopic vision, compared to traditional environments with monitors or printouts. The controllers for these devices further allow direct three-dimensional interaction with the virtual environment. In this paper, we make use of these advantages to implement a novel multiple and coordinated view (MCV) in the form of a vertical stack, showing tilted layers of geospatial data to facilitate an understanding of multi-layered maps. A formal study based on a use-case from urbanism that requires cross-referencing four layers of geospatial urban data augments our arguments for it by comparing it to more conventional systems similarly implemented in VR: a simpler grid of layers, and switching (blitting) layers on one map. Performance and oculometric analyses showed an advantage of the two spatial-multiplexing methods (the grid or the stack) over the temporal multiplexing in blitting. Overall, users tended to prefer the stack, be ambivalent to the grid, and show dislike for the blitting map. Perhaps more interestingly, we were also able to associate preferences in systems with user characteristics and behavior.
