Benefits of Immersion for Viewing 3D Data

Immersion has been shown to be beneficial in a number of different application domains. We attempted to quantify the effect of immersion on 3D abstract data analysis. We developed a program to show users animated plasma flows in a CAVE [1] environment. Stereopsis and field of regard were varied in a user test involving flows around a sphere. Our results showed that the stereopsis helped users to better understand the flow and retain more information, and also decreased the time taken to learn how to use the system. The increased field of regard resulted in shorter overall times taken to comprehend the flows. Users generally liked the immersive environment compared to more typical desktop interfaces, however the low immersion setups had some trouble navigating.