Visualizing Movement Trajectories in an Immersive Space-Time Cube

The ever-growing amount of human movement data challenges us to develop new visualization techniques and to revisit existing ones with different perspectives. Traditional 2D movement visualizations focus either on the spatial or temporal aspects of the data, potentially hindering the observation of relevant features. Emerging Immersive Analytics approaches offer the opportunity to revisit a three-dimensional visualization that allows the integrated analysis of both. With the aid of stereoscopic virtual reality and 3D user interfaces, an immersive Space-Time Cube might overcome challenges that limited its adoption in the past. In this paper, we provide an overview of the results obtained in our ongoing research on this immersive representation. We also discuss insights obtained with different navigation and interaction approaches, and our next planned steps.

[1]  Torsten Hägerstraand WHAT ABOUT PEOPLE IN REGIONAL SCIENCE , 1970 .

[2]  Colin Ware,et al.  Information Visualization: Perception for Design , 2000 .

[3]  Menno-Jan Kraak,et al.  The space - time cube revisited from a geovisualization perspective , 2003 .

[4]  Gennady L. Andrienko,et al.  Interactive analysis of event data using space-time cube , 2004, Proceedings. Eighth International Conference on Information Visualisation, 2004. IV 2004..

[5]  John T. Stasko,et al.  Casual Information Visualization: Depictions of Data in Everyday Life , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics.

[6]  Heidrun Schumann,et al.  Space, time and visual analytics , 2010, Int. J. Geogr. Inf. Sci..

[7]  Fotis Sotiropoulos,et al.  Slice WIM: a multi-surface, multi-touch interface for overview+detail exploration of volume datasets in virtual reality , 2011, SI3D.

[8]  Gennady L. Andrienko,et al.  Visual analytics of movement: An overview of methods, tools and procedures , 2013, Inf. Vis..

[9]  Irma Kveladze,et al.  The space-time cube as part of a GeoVisual analytics environment to support the understanding of movement data , 2015, Int. J. Geogr. Inf. Sci..

[10]  Matthias Klapperstück,et al.  Immersive Analytics , 2015, 2015 Big Data Visual Analytics (BDVA).

[11]  Stefan Buschmann,et al.  Animated visualization of spatial–temporal trajectory data for air-traffic analysis , 2016, The Visual Computer.

[12]  Jeremy Kepner,et al.  Improving Big Data visual analytics with interactive virtual reality , 2015, 2015 IEEE High Performance Extreme Computing Conference (HPEC).

[13]  Chad A. Steed,et al.  Immersive visualization for materials science data analysis using the Oculus Rift , 2015, 2015 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (Big Data).

[14]  Kwan-Liu Ma,et al.  A Study of Layout, Rendering, and Interaction Methods for Immersive Graph Visualization , 2016, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics.

[15]  Verina Cristie,et al.  Game Engines for Urban Exploration: Bridging Science Narrative for Broader Participants , 2017 .

[16]  Paul Parsons,et al.  Reexamining the cognitive utility of 3D visualizations using augmented reality holograms , 2017 .

[17]  Alexander Klippel,et al.  Take a Walk : Evaluating Movement Types for Data Visualization in Immersive Virtual Reality , 2017 .

[18]  J.K.H Theuns Visualising Origin-Destination Data with Virtual Reality: Functional prototypes and a framework for continued VR research at the ITC faculty , 2017 .

[19]  Carla Maria Dal Sasso Freitas,et al.  VirtualDesk: A Comfortable and Efficient Immersive Information Visualization Approach , 2018, Comput. Graph. Forum.

[20]  Doug A. Bowman,et al.  Move the Object or Move Myself? Walking vs. Manipulation for the Examination of 3D Scientific Data , 2018, Front. ICT.

[21]  Luciana Porcher Nedel,et al.  Immersive Visualization of Abstract Information: An Evaluation on Dimensionally-Reduced Data Scatterplots , 2018, 2018 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR).

[22]  Christophe Hurter,et al.  FiberClay: Sculpting Three Dimensional Trajectories to Reveal Structural Insights , 2019, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics.

[23]  Luciana Nedel,et al.  Comfortable Immersive Analytics With the VirtualDesk Metaphor , 2019, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.

[24]  Yalong Yang,et al.  Origin-Destination Flow Maps in Immersive Environments , 2019, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics.

[25]  Chris North,et al.  Immersive Analytics: Theory and Research Agenda , 2019, Front. Robot. AI.

[26]  Bruce H. Thomas,et al.  GeoGate: Correlating Geo-Temporal Datasets Using an Augmented Reality Space-Time Cube and Tangible Interactions , 2019, 2019 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR).

[27]  Wolfgang Stuerzlinger,et al.  Evaluating an Immersive Space-Time Cube Geovisualization for Intuitive Trajectory Data Exploration , 2019, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics.

[28]  Romain Vuillemot,et al.  ReViVD: Exploration and Filtering of Trajectories in an Immersive Environment using 3D Shapes , 2020, 2020 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR).

[29]  Adrien Fonnet,et al.  Survey of Immersive Analytics , 2021, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics.

[30]  L. Nedel,et al.  The Effect of Exploration Mode and Frame of Reference in Immersive Analytics , 2021, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics.

[31]  Wolfgang Stuerzlinger,et al.  Comparing and Combining Virtual Hand and Virtual Ray Pointer Interactions for Data Manipulation in Immersive Analytics , 2021, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics.