Illustrative shadows

Abstract

Many exploration and manipulation tasks benefit from a coherent integration of multiple views onto complex information spaces. This paper proposes the concept of Illustrative Shadows for a tight integration of interactive 3D graphics and schematic depictions using the shadow metaphor. The shadow metaphor provides an intuitive visual link between 3D and 2D visualizations integrating the different displays into one combined information display. Users interactively explore spatial relations in realistic shaded virtual models while functional correlations and additional textual information are presented on additional projection layers using a semantic network approach. Manipulations of one visualization immediately influence the others, resulting in an informationally and perceptibly coherent presentation.