FI3D: Direct-Touch Interaction for the Exploration of 3D Scientific Visualization Spaces

Abstract

Abstract-We present the design and evaluation of FI3D, a direct-touch data exploration technique for 3D visualization spaces. The exploration of three-dimensional data is core to many tasks and domains involving scientific visualizations. Thus, effective data navigation techniques are essential to enable comprehension, understanding, and analysis of the information space. While evidence exists that touch can provide higher-bandwidth input, somesthetic information that is valuable when interacting with virtual worlds, and awareness when working in collaboration, scientific data exploration in 3D poses unique challenges to the development of effective data manipulations. We present a technique that provides touch interaction with 3D scientific data spaces in 7 DOF. This interaction does not require the presence of dedicated objects to constrain the mapping, a design decision important for many scientific datasets such as particle simulations in astronomy or physics. We report on an evaluation that compares the technique to conventional mouse-based interaction. Our results show that touch interaction is competitive in interaction speed for translation and integrated interaction, is easy to learn and use, and is preferred for exploration and wayfinding tasks. To further explore the applicability of our basic technique for other types of scientific visualizations we present a second case study, adjusting the interaction to the illustrative visualization of fiber tracts of the brain and the manipulation of cutting planes in this context.

Hybrid Tactile/Tangible Interaction for 3D Data Exploration

“…For example, Cohé et al's tBox [11], Reismann et al's 3D-RST [56], and Yu et al's FI3D [87] provide dataset navigation facilities, Fu et al's powers-of-10 ladder [19] provides scale navigation at different levels, and Yu et al [85,86] suggest context-aware spatial selection techniques.…”

“…For example, even though Coffey et al's Slice WIM widgets [10] were demonstrated in their video in a bimanual fashion, the widget could also be used with several fingers of the same hand and we thus classify it as unimanual interaction. In contrast, while Yu et al's FI3D [87] can be used in a unimanual fashion, their constrained interaction modes necessarily require bimanual input due to the widget's design.…”

“…In addition, precise interaction is supported when specific interaction constraints are observed. Such constraints can also be specified though the use of specific widgets (physical [39] or virtual [11,19,87]), or, in the tangible case, by using the device's own orientation (e. g., constraining the manipulation along the nearest data axis) or its position (e. g., translating along the axis with the longest distance from the starting point of the interaction).…”

“…Research has shown that these tactile and tangible input paradigms have many benefits for effective and efficient interaction, in particular for 3D data exploration (e. g., [19,26,35,87]). Yet, they are quite different from each other: tactile input benefits from its directness and a resulting perception of control and precision of interaction [81,87], while tangible input offers an integrated, multi-sensory, and intuitive 6 DOF control due to its similarity to day-to-day interaction with real objects [17,33,48].…”

“…Yet, they are quite different from each other: tactile input benefits from its directness and a resulting perception of control and precision of interaction [81,87], while tangible input offers an integrated, multi-sensory, and intuitive 6 DOF control due to its similarity to day-to-day interaction with real objects [17,33,48]. The development of portable position-aware devices offers opportunities to use a tablet for tangible input in addition to the usual tactile input.…”