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Title: Feel the Globe: Enhancing the Perception of Immersive Spherical Visualizations with Tangible Proxies
Recent developments in the commercialization of virtual reality open up many opportunities for enhancing human interaction with three-dimensional objects and visualizations. Spherical visualizations allow for convenient exploration of certain types of data. Our tangible sphere, exactly aligned with the sphere visualizations shown in VR, implements a very natural way of interaction and utilizes senses and skills trained in the real world. In a lab study, we investigate the effects of the perception of actually holding a virtual spherical visualization in hands. As use cases, we focus on surface visualizations that benefit from or require a rounded shape. We compared the usage of two differently sized acrylic glass spheres to a related interaction technique that utilizes VR controllers as proxies. On the one hand, our work is motivated by the ability to create in VR a tangible, lightweight, handheld spherical display that can hardly be realized in reality. On the other hand, gaining insights about the impact of a fully tangible embodiment of a virtual object on task performance, comprehension of patterns, and user behavior is important in its own right. After a description of the implementation we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of our approach, taking into account different handheld spherical displays utilizing outside and inside projection.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1748392
NSF-PAR ID:
10146470
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Proceedings of IEEE Virtual Reality 2019, NIDIT: Workshop on Novel Input Devices and Interaction Techniques
Page Range / eLocation ID:
1693 to 1698
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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