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An example from our natural environments visualization: from distribution of species to a 3D forest.
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... was the backdrop city like? Figure 2 shows a similar process, although in the realm of scientific visualization, that decreases uncertainty from an abstract tabular data set to a more realistic 3D forest model, which will be discussed in Section 2.1. During the externalization, details are inferred and added while the nuances and uncertainties are lost. ...
Citations
... A large scale can also immerse the user in the data. This could be done for engagement or to help visualize large and dense datasets [26,35,54]. ...
Immersive analytics has emerged as a promising research area, leveraging advances in immersive display technologies and techniques, such as virtual and augmented reality, to facilitate data exploration and decision-making. This paper presents a systematic literature review of 73 studies published between 2013-2022 on immersive analytics systems and visualizations, aiming to identify and categorize the primary dimensions influencing their design. We identified five key dimensions: Academic Theory and Contribution, Immersive Technology, Data, Spatial Presentation, and Visual Presentation. Academic Theory and Contribution assess the motivations behind the works and their theoretical frameworks. Immersive Technology examines the display and input modalities, while Data dimension focuses on dataset types and generation. Spatial Presentation discusses the environment, space, embodiment, and collaboration aspects in IA, and Visual Presentation explores the visual elements, facet and position, and manipulation of views. By examining each dimension individually and cross-referencing them, this review uncovers trends and relationships that help inform the design of immersive systems visualizations. This analysis provides valuable insights for researchers and practitioners, offering guidance in designing future immersive analytics systems and shaping the trajectory of this rapidly evolving field. A free copy of this paper and all supplemental materials are available at osf.io/5ewaj.
... It is apparent that the use of virtual reality in environmental education has not yet been explored extensively compared to other subjects [1,[3][4][5][6][7][8]. Research on virtual reality or augmented reality for environmental science is largely divided into application development or user studies aimed at environmental monitoring [9][10][11][12][13], ecological awareness [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21], and environmental education [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31]. Usability research showed that virtual reality or augmented reality experience can increase participant interest, concern, or knowledge about environmental issues [32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44]. ...
... Ke et al. presented an immersive multi-sensory virtual reality application called Embodied Weather, which is designed to promote public understanding of extreme weather [17]. Huang et al. presented a virtual reality application visualizing scientific data of an ecological model, where users can explore the impacts of climate change on different tree species [18,19]. Torres et al. developed an iOS-based augmented reality application called Aire that visualizes the complex scientific concept of air pollution in the air in order to increase public awareness [20]. ...
... Ecological model [18,19] Climate, tree species over time Two scenarios of VR Aire AR [20] Air pollution Air pollution monitoring USC Air mobile AR [21] Air quality Air quality monitoring Virtual Puget Sound VR [22,32] Tide, water, salinity over time Inquiry learning EcoMUVE, EcoXPT, EcoMobile EcoMod VR/AR [23,24,41] Pond, forest ecology over time Inquiry learning using instrument ZooEduGuide mobile AR [25] Zoo animals Visualization Climate change mobile AR [26] Climate change, energy Visualization Butterfly World 1.0 mobile VR [27] Butterfly, plant ecology 360 VR experience EarthHero mobile VR [28] Pollution and reduction Mobile VR exploration Baltic Sea MR [29] Baltic Sea Habitat Interactive VR exploration Melting Sea Ice VR [30] Polar ecology, global warming over time Inquiry learning using instrument Geospatial VR [31] Environmental simulation Web, desktop, VR/AR exploration Virtual Shower VR [33] Hot water usage Interactive VR exploration Meat consumption VR [34] Meat consumption 360 VR experience Google Expedition VR [35] 700 expeditions Mobile VR exploration Water conservation VR [36] Water conservation Interactive VR exploration Ocean Acidification VR [37] CO 2 , ocean acidification Interactive VR exploration VR Ecoliteracy Curriculum [38] Erosion, renewable resource 360 VR experience Earth Science VR [39] Rock erosion, deposition 360 photo Plastic consumption VR [40] Plastic waste recycling Interactive VR exploration Climate change VR [42] Environmental threats 360 VR experience Greenland VR [43] Global warming Interactive VR exploration EduVenture VR [44] Rain forest Mobile VR exploration ...
Recently, severe environmental changes, such as global warming, climate change and environmental pollution, have become expected, and thus environmental education is becoming essential. The purpose of environmental education is to instill awareness in students to recognize and solve environmental problems. Virtual reality provides students with a spatial and temporal experience similar to reality, and it can increase their understanding of knowledge through immersion and interaction compared to traditional learning. In previous studies, virtual reality for education has mainly focused on experience, but it is difficult to find examples for environmental education. Hence, this research proposed an immersive virtual reality simulation for environmental education based on the virtual ecosystem model. It also presented two applications developed based on this simulation. This research aims at encouraging students’ active participation and motivation to solve the environmental problems while experiencing the results of interaction related to environmental factors in a virtual environment.
... The use of visualization to present information on geographical 3D data in a virtual environment was identified through the work of Ma et al. (2021) and Chen et al. (2020). Additionally, the present task refers to the use of visualization to communicate information that can improve data understanding and decision making in domains like as GIS (Huang et al., 2019;, information management (Neto et al., 2015), healthcare (Alfalah et al., 2014;Cecotti et al., 2020), engineering (Oliveira et al., 2021;Wolfartsberger et al., 2017) and other purposes (Bennett et al., 2015;Pachas-Banos et al., 2019). Furthermore, Moreno-Lumbreras et al. (2021) and Broucke and Deligiannis (2019) presented an interactive VR application to interact with smart city data. ...
... Natural environments visualization from data in VR (Huang et al., 2019) Present -support decision-making and scientific communication through a complex and realistic VR environment with extended IA functionalities. ...
... At the low-level, the task of identifying can be performed with a single target (Andersen et al., 2019;Capece et al., 2018;Kloiber et al., 2020;Oliveira et al., 2021;Pick et al., 2016), comparison for multiple targets (Alfalah et al., 2014;Cavallo et al., 2019;Huang et al., 2019;Joos et al., 2022;Reski, Alissandrakis, Tyrkkö, et al., 2020), and summarize for the entire dataset (Cecotti et al., 2020;Neto et al., 2015;Oliveira et al., 2021;Walsh et al., 2018). In addition, the share tasks were mapped to collaborative applications like the hybrid analytics system by Cavallo et al. (2019) and the hybrid asymmetric IA system by Reski, Tyrkkö, et al. (2020). ...
Immersive analytics (IA) is a fast-growing research field that concerns improving and facilitating human sense making and data understanding through an immersive experience. Understanding the suitable application scenario that will benefit from IA enables a shift towards developing effective and meaningful applications. This paper aims to explore tasks and scenarios that can benefit from IA by conducting a systematic review of existing studies and mapping them according to the multi-level typology for abstract visualization tasks, which is also known as the what-why-how framework. The study synthesizes several works to answer the why within the context of multiple levels of specificity. In addition, this study also explores the application domains and IA guiding scenarios to address when scenarios best integrate with IA. Then, the paper discusses the IA evaluation types and research methods to evaluate an IA application that can promote effective user engagement in IA. Finally, the limitations and potential future works are discussed.
... While the application of these technologies is mostly known in the gaming and entertainment industry, the usage extends beyond that. Immersive applications have been commonly used in various domains such as medical training, geoinformatics, and real-life simulation [7,12,10]. The emerging use of VR/AR and mixed reality (MR) has also brought in a new field called Immersive Analytics. ...
... Identifying the answer to the question of why visualization is used in immersive applications is similar to determining the goal of the application [3]. Based on the mapping, most of the studies intend to discover [8,11,[14][15][16][17] and present [6,7,9,10,12,16], then followed by produce [13,17]. In the application context, no studies were identified to use enjoy as its high-level task. ...
... The use of visualization to make comparisons were presented in [11] where the authors conducted a study to compare the effectiveness of understanding bibliography references using VR graphs and digital news. Besides, another study [12] compared the immersion and perceived workload of smart city data between three types of web platforms in their proposed VR system. Similarly, it is also arguable that this sequence of tasks (from high-level to low-level, without going through the mid-level) is valid. ...
... Shan & Sun (2021) designed a VR landscape planning simulation system including a display layer and 3D image processing technology. Huang et al. (2019) addressed the challenges of modelling natural environments where users value realism. They developed a prototype for VR visualization applications for forests that balance graphical realism and scientific accuracy, translating ecological model output data into a high-fidelity VR experience that allows users to walk through forests of the future. ...
... A 3D user interface (3DUI) was implemented using the UE Blueprint, the forest procedurally modelled in Esri CityEngine and other ecosystem components were added in UE. However, Shan & Sun (2021) and Huang et al. (2019) modelled only limited landscape areas. Bao et al. (2012) present a framework for rendering large-scale forest scenes realistically and quickly with emphasis on leads and shadows. ...
An early-stage development of a Digital Twin (DT) in Virtual Reality (VR) is presented, aiming for civic engagement in a new urbandevelopment located in an area that is a forest today. The area is presently used for recreation. For the developer, it is important bothto communicate how the new development will affect the forest and allow for feedback from the citizen. High quality DT models aretime-consuming to generate, especially for VR. Current model generation methods require the model developer to manually designthe virtual environment. Furthermore, they are not scalable when multiple scenarios are required as a project progresses. This studyaimed to create an automated, procedural workflow to generate DT models and visualize large-scale data in VR with a focus onexisting green structures as a basis for participatory approaches. Two versions of the VR prototype were developed in closecooperation with the urban developer and evaluated in two user tests. A procedural workflow was developed for generating DTmodels and integrated into the VR application. For the green structures, efforts focused on the vegetation, such as realisticrepresentation and placement of different types of trees and bushes. Only navigation functions were enabled in the first user test withpractitioners (9 participants). Interactive functions were enabled in the second user test with pupils (age 15, 9 participants). In bothtests, the researchers observed the participants and carried out short reflective interviews. The user test evaluation focussed on theperception of the vegetation, general perception of the VR environment, interaction, and navigation. The results show that theworkflow is effective, and the users appreciate green structure representations in VR environments in both user tests. Based on theworkflow, similar scenes can be created for any location in Sweden. Future development needs to concentrate on the refinement ofbuildings and information content. A challenge will be balancing the level of detail for communication with residents.
... These terms were Virtual Environments, Scenes, and Virtual Terrains. Virtual Environment was a term used in 11 out of the 31 papers [21, 23, 26, 30, 34-38, 40, 64]; more specific versions included Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) [21], Virtual Geographic Environments (VGEs) [26], Virtual Reality Environments [37,40], Virtual Reality Geomodeling Environment [38], Interactive Virtual Reality Environments [35], and Geovisualisation Immersive Virtual Environment (GeoIVE) [36]. Scenes was the term used in four papers [3,4,14,26]; more specific versions included 3D panoramic scenes [14], Surface Topography Scene [3], Bed Topography/Bathymetry Scene [3], and VR Flood Scene [26]. ...
... The use of 3D space implies that the models themselves become more digestible and easy to comprehend. Three of the 14 used CAVE [34,64,65], whereas the rest used a kind of PC-Powered HMD (HTC Vive [26,50,67,80], Oculus Rift [3,30,[36][37][38], or unspecified [35,76]). ...
... In nine out of these 14 papers, the visualisations were presented in-situ with a generated environment around the model [3,26,30,34,36,37,50,64,65]. To navigate these environments, the developers employed a variety of styles of locomotion, but was in large part user-centric. ...
Geological fieldwork forms an integral part of science discovery, exploration, and learning in many geoscientific domains. Yet, there are barriers that can hinder its practice. To address this, prior research has investigated immersive geovisualisations, however, there is no consensus on the types of interaction tools and techniques that should be used. We have conducted a literature review of 31 papers and present the visualisation environments, interaction tools and techniques, and evaluation methods from this last decade. We found a lack of established taxonomy for visualisation environments; an absence of thorough reports on interaction tools and techniques; and a lack of use of relevant human-computer interaction (HCI) theories and user-centered approaches. This review contributes towards the development of a design framework as we propose a basic taxonomy; demonstrate the need for holistic records of user interactions; and highlight the need for HCI evaluation methods. Addressing these gaps will facilitate future innovation in the emerging field of immersive geovisualisations.
... Finally, particular attention needs to be focused on how the community of managers engages with simulation models and their outputs to ensure that forecasts are easily accessible, interpretable, and useful for decision-making. Recent advances in visualization offer a way to make findings more approachable to managers, including the use of tangible landscapes and virtual reality to translate model outputs into observable landscape elements (Huang, Lucash, Simpson, Helgeson, & Klippel, 2019;Lewis & Sheppard, 2006;Tabrizian et al., 2016). They can also more tangibly connect managers with the realities and challenges of the novel landscapes they may be managing in the future (Rubio-Tamayo, Barrio, & García, 2017). ...
Restoration and conservation innovations face numerous challenges that often limit widespread adoption, including uncertainty of outcomes, risk averse or status quo biased management, and unknown trade‐offs. These barriers often result in cautious conservation that does not consider the true cost of impeding innovation, and overemphasizes the risks of unintended consequences versus the opportunities presented by proactive and innovative conservation, the intended consequences. Simulation models are powerful tools for forecasting and evaluating the potential outcomes of restoration or conservation innovations prior to on‐the‐ground deployment. These forecasts provide information about the potential trade‐offs among the risks and benefits of candidate management actions, elucidating the likelihood that an innovation will achieve its intended consequences and at what cost. They can also highlight when and where business‐as‐usual management may incur larger costs than alternative management approaches over the long‐term. Forecasts inform the decision‐making process prior to the implementation of emergent, proactive practices at broad scales, lending support for management decisions and reducing the barriers to innovation. Here we review the science, motivations, and challenges of forecasting for restoration and conservation innovations.
... With immersive technologies becoming a medium of mass communication, there are additional opportunities to further our understanding of what communicating environmental change in a more visceral way means from a perceptual and cognitive perspective. While beyond the scope of this article, we consider it essential to advance empirical evaluations of how uncertainty can be included in rather explicit 3D models (Huang et al. 2019b) to understand what embodied experiences mean in terms of creating a connection to nature and a more empathetic response to those affected by climate change, and whether visceral experiences allow for creating ripple effects that facilitate system thinking and potential long-term changes in human behavior. ...
Communicating and understanding climate induced environmental changes can be challenging, especially using traditional representations such as graphs, maps or photos. Immersive visualizations and experiences offer an intuitive, visceral approach to otherwise rather abstract concepts, but creating them scientifically is challenging. In this paper, we linked ecological modeling, procedural modeling, and virtual reality to provide an immersive experience of a future forest. We mapped current tree species composition in northern Wisconsin using the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) data and then forecast forest change 50 years into the future under two climate scenarios using LANDIS-II, a spatially-explicit, mechanistic simulation model. We converted the model output (e.g., tree biomass) into parameters required for 3D visualizations with analytical modeling. Procedural rules allowed us to efficiently and reproducibly translate the parameters into a simulated forest. Data visualization, environment exploration, and information retrieval were realized using the Unreal Engine. A system evaluation with experts in ecology provided positive feedback and future topics for a comprehensive ecosystem visualization and analysis approach. Our approach to create visceral experiences of forests under climate change can facilitate communication among experts, policy-makers, and the general public.
... High visual realism facilitates perception of details, concretization of abstract concepts, and experiential learning in scenarios connecting to real life. Low realism promotes abstract thinking, high-level comprehension and generalization of concepts [17]. Further, the need for high visual realism and low visual realism often varies by fields. ...
Understanding the effects of environmental features such as visual
realism on spatial memory can inform a human-centered design of
virtual environments. This paper investigates the effects of visual
realism on object location memory in virtual reality, taking account
of individual differences, gaze, and locomotion. Participants freely
explored two environments which varied in visual realism, and then
recalled the locations of objects by returning the misplaced objects
back to original locations. Overall, we did not find a significant relationship
between visual realism and object location memory. We
found, however, that individual differences such as spatial ability
and gender accounted for more variance than visual realism. Gaze
and locomotion analysis suggest that participants exhibited longer
gaze duration and more clustered movement patterns in the low
realism condition. Preliminary inspection further found that locomotion
hotspots coincided with objects that showed a significant
gaze time difference between high and low visual realism levels.
These results suggest that high visual realism still provides positive
spatial learning affordances but the effects are more intricate.
