Immersive Data Visualization with Virtual Reality

A screenshot of the Unity environment with the user (shown as a silhouette), performing a brushing operation via ray casting.

There has been a resurgence of interest in Virtual Reality (VR) with the advent of several consumer-ready head mounted displays. And while VR has a long standing tradition in graphics literature traceable to the early 90's, little research has been conducted on the implications of modern VR and 3D displays on Data Visualization. In this work we explore how to create immersive 3D data visualizations and subsequently interact with them effectively using novel modalities such as head pose. We hypothesize that an immersive data visualization experience provides benefits beyond traditional desktop counterparts and that a user is better connected to the data, both perceptually and emotionally.

Software

These visualizations require and Oculus Rift DK2 to run correctly. For the web visualizations additionally installt the npvr plugin from npvr-master/bin/ (further instructions here). Note that the visualizations may run without the hardware attached, but you will not be able to fully experience them in virtual reality and there may be unexpected behavior.

- Unity Demo: Download and run UnityVR/brushing_demo.exe
- AsterankVR
- NeuralNetworkVR

Materials