Origin-Destination Flow Maps in Immersive Environments

Abstract

Immersive virtual- and augmented-reality headsets can overlay a flat image against any surface or hang virtual objects in the space around the user. The technology is rapidly improving and may, in the long term, replace traditional flat panel displays in many situations. When displays are no longer intrinsically flat, how should we use the space around the user for abstract data visualisation? In this paper, we ask this question with respect to origin-destination flow data in a global geographic context. We report on the findings of three studies exploring different spatial encodings for flow maps. The first experiment focuses on different 2D and 3D encodings for flows on flat maps. We find that participants are significantly more accurate with raised flow paths whose height is proportional to flow distance but fastest with traditional straight line 2D flows. In our second and third experiment we compared flat maps, 3D globes and a novel interactive design we call MapsLink, involving a pair of linked flat maps. We find that participants took significantly more time with MapsLink than other flow maps while the 3D globe with raised flows was the fastest, most accurate, and most preferred method. Our work suggests that careful use of the third spatial dimension can resolve visual clutter in complex flow maps.

Geospatial Information Visualization and Extended Reality Displays

“…7.7). Yang et al (2019) provide specific guidance for designing flow maps on (3D) digital globes. They recommend taking advantage of the z-axis to design flows with 3D curvature to help reduce clutter and make the maps more readable and provide evidence-based advice for displaying flows on 3D globes.…”

What-Why Analysis of Expert Interviews: Analysing Geographically-Embedded Flow Data

“…2]. The motivation for these interviews was to understand the requirements and role of flow data in real-world applications and existing work flows across different disciplines, in order to help inform new visualisation designs [14,15].…”

“…2]. The motivation for these interviews was to understand the requirements and role of flow data in real-world applications and existing work flows across different disciplines, in order to help inform new visualisation designs [14,15].The contributions of this work are: 1) three high-level flow-targets for analysing geographically-embedded flow data; 2) using Munzner's framework [11] to abstract analytic tasks in interview analysis; 3) five use cases for motivating flow data visualisation design.…”

Interacting with Maps in Virtual and Augmented Reality

“…Augmented reality, virtual reality, immersive visualisation, immersive analytics Figure 1: Mid-air gesture interaction with globes and maps in AR (Yang et al, 2019).…”

“…As for handheld controllers, we discuss interaction with exocentric globes, egocentric globes (where the user stands inside a large virtual globe), flat maps, and curved maps in VR. We demonstrate controller-based interaction for adjusting the centre of world maps displayed on these four types of projection surfaces , and illustrate the utility of interactively movable VR maps by the example of three-dimensional origin-destination flow maps (Yang et al 2019).…”