Navigating 3d Scatter Plots in Immersive Virtual Reality

Abstract

Virtual reality reveals spatially complex structures behind 3d data in an easily explorable way. The difficulty is in navigating this space while wearing a head- mounted display (HMD). One viable option for view control is a combination of a 3d mouse for camera location and head tracking of the HMD for the control of view direction. The scenes shown here display semi-randomized 3d scatter plots, each of which emphasizes a type of navigation that leads the viewer to discover structure behind the data. The three types of navigation are rotation, scale and alignment.