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Evaluating the effectiveness of occlusion reduction techniques for 3D virtual environments

Published: 01 November 2006 Publication History

Abstract

We present an empirical usability experiment studying the relative strengths and weaknesses of three different occlusion reduction techniques for discovering and accessing objects in information-rich 3D virtual environments. More specifically, the study compares standard 3D navigation, generalized fisheye techniques using object scaling and transparency, and the BalloonProbe interactive 3D space distortion technique. Subjects are asked to complete a number of different tasks, including counting, pattern recognition, and object relation, in different kinds of environments with various properties. The environments include a free-space abstract 3D environment and a virtual 3D walkthrough application for a simple building floor. The study involved 16 subjects and was conducted in a three-sided CAVE environment. Our results confirm the general guideline that each task calls for a specialized interaction--no single technique performed best across all tasks and worlds. The results also indicate a clear trade-off between speed and accuracy; simple navigation was the fastest but also most error-prone technique, whereas spherical BalloonProbe proved the most accurate but required longer completion time, making it suitable for applications where mistakes incur a high cost.

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Cited By

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  • (2024)A Systematic Literature Review of User Evaluation in Immersive AnalyticsComputer Graphics Forum10.1111/cgf.1511143:3Online publication date: 10-Jun-2024
  • (2023)Toward Intuitive Acquisition of Occluded VR Objects Through an Interactive Disocclusion Mini-map2023 IEEE Conference Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR)10.1109/VR55154.2023.00061(460-470)Online publication date: Mar-2023
  • (2013)Efficient occlusion-free visualization for navigation in mountainous areasComputers & Geosciences10.1016/j.cageo.2012.09.01652(389-397)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2013
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cover image ACM Conferences
VRST '06: Proceedings of the ACM symposium on Virtual reality software and technology
November 2006
400 pages
ISBN:1595933212
DOI:10.1145/1180495
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 01 November 2006

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Author Tags

  1. 3D space distortion
  2. evaluation
  3. interaction techniques
  4. occlusion management
  5. occlusion reduction

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Cited By

View all
  • (2024)A Systematic Literature Review of User Evaluation in Immersive AnalyticsComputer Graphics Forum10.1111/cgf.1511143:3Online publication date: 10-Jun-2024
  • (2023)Toward Intuitive Acquisition of Occluded VR Objects Through an Interactive Disocclusion Mini-map2023 IEEE Conference Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR)10.1109/VR55154.2023.00061(460-470)Online publication date: Mar-2023
  • (2013)Efficient occlusion-free visualization for navigation in mountainous areasComputers & Geosciences10.1016/j.cageo.2012.09.01652(389-397)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2013
  • (2010)Exploring the design space of multiscale 3D orientationProceedings of the International Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces10.1145/1842993.1843008(81-88)Online publication date: 26-May-2010
  • (2009)An Occlusion-Reduced 3D Hierarchical Data Visualization TechniqueProceedings of the 2009 13th International Conference Information Visualisation10.1109/IV.2009.32(38-43)Online publication date: 15-Jul-2009
  • (2008)Extending Measurement Science to Interactive Visualisation EnvironmentsTrends in Interactive Visualization10.1007/978-1-84800-269-2_13(287-302)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2008
  • (2007)Employing dynamic transparency for 3D occlusion managementProceedings of the 11th IFIP TC 13 international conference on Human-computer interaction10.5555/1776994.1777065(532-545)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2007
  • (2007)Handbook for Evaluation Studies in Virtual Reality2007 IEEE Symposium on Virtual Environments, Human-Computer Interfaces and Measurement Systems10.1109/VECIMS.2007.4373918(1-6)Online publication date: Jun-2007
  • (2007)Employing Dynamic Transparency for 3D Occlusion Management: Design Issues and EvaluationHuman-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 200710.1007/978-3-540-74796-3_54(532-545)Online publication date: 2007

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