Combining physical and semantical navigation in three-dimensional information visualization

The eld of information visualization is in permanent expansion and new and innovative ways of visualizing large volumes of abstract data are being developed. The use of virtual metaphoric worlds is one of them, but these visualizations per se are only truly useful if the user is provided a means of exploring the information. A common way of data exploration is navigation. In the case of three-dimensional (3D) information visualization, navigation as a means of information exploration attains even more importance due to the extra exploitable dimension. Nonetheless, navigation in large virtual worlds is still a di cult task and not only for naïve users; there is anecdotal evidence that electronic navigation is considered di cult even by the virtual worlds builders. Way nding, knowing where to go , is sometimes perceived as the hardest part; other times, it is the locomotion, getting there , that is found di cult. This paper presents a navigation strategy that attempts to solve these problems by combining physical/metaphoric navigation with semantic navigation. We present a framework for navigating large virtual worlds that relies heavily on the use of visual metaphors. The combination of physical and semantic navigation embedded in the metaphor components allows for a powerful data exploration and electronic navigation mechanism.