面向沉浸式流场可视化的多视图数据管理方法

由于沉浸式环境下的三维交互方式对二维界面操作不够友好,使得依赖于二维列表界面的流场数据管理任务变得复杂且低效。为了实现沉浸式虚拟环境下对流场数据高效的组织和管理,增强用户对流场空间信息的理解,提出一种基于多视图结合交互的沉浸式流场可视化数据块管理方法。该方法构建了一个三维小视图用于提供场景概览,并通过“主视图交互+小视图辅助“”小视图交互+主视图反馈”等多种多视图组合交互方式完成对多块流场数据的管理交互操作。最后构建了一个基于手势的沉浸式流场可视化系统,定义多项交互任务,从学习时长、完成时间和用户反馈几个方面对比了多视图方法和传统交互方法差异。实验结果表明,相比于传统交互方法,多视图方法可以显著提高数据管理任务的效率。     

An open and scalable architecture for delivering 3D shared visualization services to heterogeneous devices

Shared visualization environments represent an effective means to enhance collaborative work in engineering and scientific design tasks. The availability of high‐speed networks allows researchers to work together from geographically distributed locations, and mobile devices are able to carry out ubiquitous 3D visualization tasks through wireless network connections. This paper presents a scalable architecture for the delivery of shared 3D visualization services to heterogeneous terminals ranging from powerful workstations to mobile devices such as PDAs and smart‐phones. The framework design allows both desktop and mobile clients to simultaneously visualize the same model by sharing a common view. Remote‐rendering servers support effective visualization on thin clients, and a load balancing mechanism provides efficient resource usage. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Measuring flow experience in an immersive virtual environment for collaborative learning

In contexts other than immersive virtual environments, theoretical and empirical work has identified flow experience as a major factor in learning and human–computer interaction. Flow is defined as a ‘holistic sensation that people feel when they act with total involvement’. We applied the concept of flow to modeling the experience of collaborative learning in an immersive virtual environment. The aims were, first, to psychometrically evaluate a measurement model of flow and, second, to test a structural model of flow. Pairs of small teams engaged in collaborative problem‐solving tasks while communicating by way of an immersive virtual environment. Flow was measured after each session, using Guo and Poole's inventory for measuring flow in human–computer interaction. In relation to the first aim, partial‐least‐squares analysis demonstrated strong evidence for the measurement model. In relation to the second aim, the structural model was supported: the effect of learning‐task characteristics on flow experience was mediated by its precursors, with extraneous variables held constant. It is reasoned that the experiment and resultant analysis of this work contributes to the development of measurement models and structural models of flow in immersive virtual environments.     

Analyzing the performance of a cluster-based architecture for immersive visualization systems

Cluster computing has become an essential issue for designing immersive visualization systems. This paradigm employs scalable clusters of commodity computers with much lower costs than would be possible with the high-end, shared memory computers that have been traditionally used for virtual reality purposes. This change in the design of virtual reality systems has caused some development environments oriented toward shared memory computing to require modifications to their internal architectures in order to support cluster computing. This is the case of VR Juggler, which is considered one of the most important virtual reality application development frameworks based on open source code.     

Are We There Yet? A Roadmap of Network Visualization from Surveys to Task Taxonomies

Networks are abstract and ubiquitous data structures, defined as a set of data points and relationships between them. Network visualization provides meaningful representations of these data, supporting researchers in understanding the connections, gathering insights, and detecting and identifying unexpected patterns. Research in this field is focusing on increasingly challenging problems, such as visualizing dynamic, complex, multivariate, and geospatial networked data. This ever-growing, and widely varied, body of research led to several surveys being published, each covering one or more disciplines of network visualization. Despite this effort, the variety and complexity of this research represents an obstacle when surveying the domain and building a comprehensive overview of the literature. Furthermore, there exists a lack of clarification and uniformity between the terminology used in each of the surveys, which requires further effort when mapping and categorizing the plethora of different visualization techniques and approaches. In this paper, we aim at providing researchers and practitioners alike with a “roadmap” detailing the current research trends in the field of network visualization. We design our contribution as a meta-survey where we discuss, summarize, and categorize recent surveys and task taxonomies published in the context of network visualization. We identify more and less saturated disciplines of research and consolidate the terminology used in the surveyed literature. We also survey the available task taxonomies, providing a comprehensive analysis of their varying support to each network visualization discipline and by establishing and discussing a classification for the individual tasks. With this combined analysis of surveys and task taxonomies, we provide an overarching structure of the field, from which we extrapolate the current state of research and promising directions for future work.     

沉浸式可视化综述

沉浸式可视化是一个新兴的研究领域,旨在通过沉浸式交互界面所提供的沉浸感与参与感充分运用人们的感知与操作能力,为数据分析推理与决策提供支持.以最新的沉浸式可视化研究为基础,首先从沉浸式感知的评估与运用出发,介绍视觉感知以及非视觉辅助感知在信息可视化中的应用方式与评估结果;然后对于可视化中的交互设计,分别从触摸、手势、注视与移动导航4种类别概述最新的交互技术;再针对可视化的创作工具,从桌面端、移动端以及多端融合3个方面进行创作工具的概述;最后对沉浸式可视化的产业趋势、应用以及挑战进行总结.     

3DIVE: An Immersive Environment for Interactive Volume Data Exploration

This paper describes an immersive system,called 3DIVE,for interactive volume data visualization and exploration inside the CAVE virtual environment.Combining interactive volume rendering and virtual reality provides a netural immersive environment for volumetric data visualization.More advanced data exploration operations,such as object level data manipulation,simulation and analysis ,are supported in 3DIVE by several new techniques,In particular,volume primitives and texture regions ae used for the rendering,manipulation,and collision detection of volumetric objects;and the region-based rendering pipeline is integrated with 3D image filters to provide an image-based mechanism for interactive transfer function design.The system has been recently released as public domain software for CAVE/ImmersaDesk users,and is currently being actively used by various scientific and biomedical visualization projects.     

Frontiers in User-Computer Interaction

In this age of (near-)adequate computing power, the power and usability of the user interface is as key to an application's success as its functionality. Most of the code in modern desktop productivity applications resides in the user interface. But despite its centrality, the user interface field is currently in a rut: the WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, Point-and-Click GUI based on keyboard and mouse) has evolved little since it was pioneered by Xerox PARC in the early '70s. Computer and display form factors will change dramatically in the near future and new kinds of interaction devices will soon become available. Desktop environments will be enriched not only with PDAs such as the Newton and Palm Pilot, but also with wearable computers and large-screen displays produced by new projection technology, including office-based immersive virtual reality environments. On the input side, we will finally have speech-recognition and force-feedback devices. Thus we can look forward to user interfaces that are dramatically more powerful and better matched to human sensory capabilities than those dependent solely on keyboard and mouse. 3D interaction widgets controlled by mice or other interaction devices with three or more degrees of freedom are a natural evolution from their two-dimensional WIMP counterparts and can decrease the cognitive distance between widget and task for many tasks that are intrinsically 3D, such as scientific visualization and MCAD. More radical post-WIMP UIs are needed for immersive virtual reality where keyboard and mouse are absent. Immersive VR provides good driving applications for developing post-WIMP UIs based on multimodal interaction that involve more of our senses by combining the use of gesture, speech, and haptics.     

Individual differences and personality correlates of navigational performance in the virtual route learning task

Research on the mechanisms and processes underlying navigation has traditionally been limited by the practical problems of setting up and controlling navigation in a real-world setting. Thanks to advances in technology, a growing number of researchers are making use of computer-based virtual environments to draw inferences about real-world navigation. However, little research has been done on factors affecting human–computer interactions in navigation tasks. In this study female students completed a virtual route learning task and filled out a battery of questionnaires, which determined levels of computer experience, wayfinding anxiety, neuroticism, extraversion, psychoticism and immersive tendencies as well as their preference for a route or survey strategy. Scores on personality traits and individual differences were then correlated with the time taken to complete the navigation task, the length of path travelled, the velocity of the virtual walk and the number of errors.Navigation performance was significantly influenced by wayfinding anxiety, psychoticism, involvement and overall immersive tendencies and was improved in those participants who adopted a survey strategy. In other words, navigation in virtual environments is effected not only by navigational strategy, but also an individual’s personality, and other factors such as their level of experience with computers. An understanding of these differences is crucial before performance in virtual environments can be generalised to real-world navigational performance.     

The influence of virtual presence: Effects on experienced cognitive load and learning outcomes in educational computer games

Does the immersive design of an educational gaming environment affect learners’ virtual presence and how much do they learn? Does virtual presence affect learning? This study tries to answer these questions by examining the differences in virtual presence and learning outcomes in two different computer-based multimedia environments: a gaming environment with high immersive design vs. hypertext learning environment with low immersive design. As the main focus, the effect of virtual presence on learning is also explained and tested. By identifying virtual presence as a variable that may determine learning, it is argued that computer gaming environments present a new challenge for researchers to investigate, particularly, the effects of virtual presence on the immersive design of games in order to help designers to predict which instructional configurations will maximize learning performance. In general, results revealed that the high-immersive gaming environment leads to the strongest form of virtual presence but also decreased learning. Although regression analyses indicate that virtual presence positively influences trivial- and non-trivial learning outcomes, learners who learned in a low-immersive environment outperformed the gaming group. A mediation analysis showed that the relation between virtual presence and non-trivial learning outcomes is partly mediated through increased cognitive load.     

多模态人机交互综述

多模态人机交互旨在利用语音、图像、文本、眼动和触觉等多模态信息进行人与计算机之间的信息交换。在生理心理评估、办公教育、军事仿真和医疗康复等领域具有十分广阔的应用前景。本文系统地综述了多模态人机交互的发展现状和新兴方向,深入梳理了大数据可视化交互、基于声场感知的交互、混合现实实物交互、可穿戴交互和人机对话交互的研究进展以及国内外研究进展比较。本文认为拓展新的交互方式、设计高效的各模态交互组合、构建小型化交互设备、跨设备分布式交互、提升开放环境下交互算法的鲁棒性等是多模态人机交互的未来研究趋势。     

The Personal Interaction Panel – a Two-Handed Interface for Augmented Reality

This paper describes the introduction of a new interaction paradigm to augmented reality applications. The everyday tool handling experience of working with pen and notebooks is extended to create a three dimensional two-handed interface, that supports easy-to-understand manipulation tasks in augmented and virtual environments. In the design step we take advantage from the freedom, given by our very low demands on hardware and augment form and functionality to this device. On the basis of examples from object manipulation, augmented research environments and scientific visualization we show the generality of applicability. Although being in the first stages implementation, we consider the wide spectrum of suitability for different purposes.     

VR-Electricians: Immersive storytelling for attracting students to the electrical construction industry

Although it is projected to have significant employment growth in the electrical construction industry, there are not enough young people to join the workforce. It is indispensable for the future of work in construction to explore emerging technologies and effectively attract the younger generation to the construction industry. This paper explores the innovative use of 360-degree immersive environments powered by virtual electricians to tell success stories of the electrical construction trades on the field (VR-Electricians) and understand how such an immersive storytelling approach can attract young people to join the industry. A pretest-posttest design was used for the VR-Electricians assessment. VR-Electricians was found to significantly enhance several aspects of students’ attitude towards the electrical construction industry. VR-Electricians was also rated as a highly usable and easy-to-use system. The outcomes of this study provide construction researchers and practitioners an understanding of how immersive storytelling can be used as a powerful technology-mediated method for attracting students to their field.     

沉浸式虚拟维修仿真及其应用

文中给出了沉浸式虚拟维修仿真系统的框架,从样机建模和交互技术两个方面对其关键技术进行了研究。提出了虚拟维修样机的概念,通过定义样机部件的约束运动和交互特征来实现其要求的功能。而交互技术则主要集中在抓取、运动控制和防穿越处理上。对系统在维修性设计分析(核查)、维修程序确认和辅助维修训练中的应用进行了说明。建立了基于Jack系统的沉浸式虚拟维修仿真原型系统,并以某机构的拆装为例对其进行了初步的应用验证。     

基于DSP平台的景象匹配算法评估环境

将DSP软硬件技术与PC人机交互技术相结合，构建了基于DSP平台的景象匹配算法评估环境，设计和实现了评估环境中各软硬件功能模块。采用PC-DSP的架构形式对评估环境进行模块划分，在DSP端实现了与真实设备功能、性能接近的模拟硬件设备和嵌入式软件，在PC端对DSP的运行接口进行封装，并通过数据可视化、图像化操作等人机交互手段实现用户对DSP端算法程序运行过程的控制和观测。     

A Spoken Dialogue System for Navigation in Non-Immersive Virtual Environments

Navigation is the process by which people control their movement in virtual environments and is a corefunctional requirement for all virtual environment (VE) applications. Users require the ability to move, controllingorientation, direction of movement and speed, in order to achieve a particular goal within a VE. Navigation israrely the end point in itself (which is typically interaction with the visual representations of data) but applicationsoften place a high demand on navigation skills, which in turn means that a high level of support for navigationis required from the application. On desktop systems navigation in non‐immersive systems is usually supportedthrough the usual hardware devices of mouse and keyboard. Previous work by the authors shows that many usersexperience frustration when trying to perform even simple navigation tasks — users complain about getting lost,becoming disorientated and finding the interface `difficult to use'. In this paper we report on work in progressin exploiting natural language processing (NLP) technology to support navigation in non‐immersive virtualenvironments. A multi‐modal system has been developed which supports a range of high‐level (spoken) navigationcommands and indications are that spoken dialogue interaction is an effective alternative to mouse and keyboardinteraction for many tasks. We conclude that multi‐modal interaction, combining technologies such as NLP withmouse and keyboard may offer the most effective interaction with VEs and identify a number of areas where furtherwork is necessary. ACM CSS: I.3.6 Computer Graphics Methodology and Techniques—Interaction and Techniques, I.3.7 Three‐DimensionalGraphics and Realism—Virtual Reality, I.2.7 Natural Language Processing—Speech Recognitionand Synthesis     

The virtual playground: an educational virtual reality environment for evaluating interactivity and conceptual learning

The research presented in this paper aims at investigating user interaction in immersive virtual learning environments, focusing on the role and the effect of interactivity on conceptual learning. The goal has been to examine if the learning of young users improves through interacting in (i.e. exploring, reacting to, and acting upon) an immersive virtual environment (VE) compared to non-interactive or non-immersive environments. Empirical work was carried out with more than 55 primary school students between the ages of 8 and 12, in different between-group experiments: an exploratory study, a pilot study, and a large-scale experiment. The latter was conducted in a virtual environment designed to simulate a playground. In this “Virtual Playground,” each participant was asked to complete a set of tasks designed to address arithmetical “fractions” problems. Three different conditions, two experimental virtual reality (VR) conditions and a non-VR condition, that varied the levels of activity and interactivity, were designed to evaluate how children accomplish the various tasks. Pre-tests, post-tests, interviews, video, audio, and log files were collected for each participant, and analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively. This paper presents a selection of case studies extracted from the qualitative analysis, which illustrate the variety of approaches taken by children in the VEs in response to visual cues and system feedback. Results suggest that the fully interactive VE aided children in problem solving but did not provide a strong evidence of conceptual change as expected; rather, it was the passive VR environment, where activity was guided by a virtual robot, that seemed to support student reflection and recall, leading to indications of conceptual change.     

Multi-modal virtual environments for education with haptic and olfactory feedback

It has been suggested that immersive virtual reality (VR) technology allows knowledge-building experiences and in this way provides an alternative educational process. Important key features of constructivist educational computer-based environments for science teaching and learning, include interaction, size, transduction and reification. Indeed, multi-sensory VR technology suits very well the needs of sciences that require a higher level of visualization and interaction. Haptics that refers to physical interactions with virtual environments (VEs) may be coupled with other sensory modalities such as vision and audition but are hardly ever associated with other feedback channels, such as olfactory feedback. A survey of theory and existing VEs including haptic or olfactory feedback, especially in the field of education is provided. Our multi-modal human-scale VE VIREPSE (virtual reality platform for simulation and experimentation) that provides haptic interaction using a string-based interface called SPIDAR (space interface device for artificial reality), olfactory and auditory feedbacks is described. An application that allows students experiencing the abstract concept of the Bohr atomic model and the quantization of the energy levels has been developed. Different configurations that support interaction, size and reification through the use of immersive and multi-modal (visual, haptic, auditory and olfactory) feedback are proposed for further evaluation. Haptic interaction is achieved using different techniques ranging from desktop pseudo-haptic feedback to human-scale haptic interaction. Olfactory information is provided using different fan-based olfactory displays (ODs). Significance of developing such multi-modal VEs for education is discussed.     

An experimental investigation of menu selection for immersive virtual environments: fixed versus handheld menus

Virtual Reality - With the development of consumer-grade virtual reality (VR) systems, the interface and interaction design for immersive virtual environments have become a critical issue for VR...     

VirtualDesk: A Comfortable and Efficient Immersive Information Visualization Approach

3D representations are potentially useful under many circumstances, but suffer from long known perception and interaction challenges. Current immersive technologies, which combine stereoscopic displays and natural interaction, are being progressively seen as an opportunity to tackle this issue, but new guidelines and studies are still needed, especially regarding information visualization. Many proposed approaches are impractical for actual usage, resulting in user discomfort or requiring too much time or space. In this work, we implement and evaluate an alternative data exploration metaphor where the user remains seated and viewpoint change is only realisable through physical movements. All manipulation is done directly by natural mid‐air gestures, with the data being rendered at arm's reach. The virtual reproduction of the analyst's desk aims to increase immersion and enable tangible interaction with controls and two dimensional associated information. A comparative user study was carried out against a desktop‐based equivalent, exploring a set of 9 perception and interaction tasks based on previous literature and a multidimensional projection use case. We demonstrate that our prototype setup, named VirtualDesk, presents excellent results regarding user comfort and immersion, and performs equally or better in all analytical tasks, while adding minimal or no time overhead and amplifying user subjective perceptions of efficiency and engagement. Results are also contrasted to a previous experiment employing artificial flying navigation, with significant observed improvements.