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.
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