Linking Real Geographies and Virtual Realties with Immersive Geospatial Technologies

Due to the quantity of information available in the early twenty-first century, big data has become a frequently emphasized factor, and particularly so in the geographical research agenda. However, more data and information do not necessarily result in improved awareness of spatial problems: Communication of geographical knowledge (e.g., on environmental issues) is also complicated by geographical, temporal, and psychological distance between cause and effects, leading users to perceive spatial problems as taking place “later” or “elsewhere”. In this text, we discuss how immersive virtual reality (VR) technologies can help to overcome these different kinds of distances. Two broad topics are addressed: The first, covered in Sect. 4.2, explores the idea of immersion from a technological perspective and also discusses the main differences between immersive and current desktop-based geovisualization VR systems. The second, presented in Sect. 4.3, concerns the potential of immersive VR from the perspective of the user and introduces the concept of spatial presence. Against the theoretical background of Sects. 4.2 and 4.3, a working method defining how geospatial data can be visualized in immersive VR systems under current technological conditions is presented in Sect. 4.4. We argue that current geographic information systems (GIS) are not yet directly compatible with VR output devices, challenging both theoretical and practical models of GIS-based spatial data. The method proposed is set into practice in Sect. 4.5 using the example of a coral reef ecosystem. As is clear from these theoretical and practical considerations, immersive VR technologies can provide powerful tools to facilitate a better understanding of spatial problems in the twenty-first century.