Browsing by Author "Skarbez, Richard"

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    Immersive Analytics: Theory and Research Agenda
    Skarbez, Richard; Polys, Nicholas F.; Ogle, J. Todd; North, Christopher L.; Bowman, Douglas A. (Frontiers, 2019-09-10)
    Advances in a variety of computing fields, including "big data," machine learning, visualization, and augmented/mixed/virtual reality, have combined to give rise to the emerging field of immersive analytics, which investigates how these new technologies support analysis and decision making. Thus far, we feel that immersive analytics research has been somewhat ad hoc, possibly owing to the fact that there is not yet an organizing framework for immersive analytics research. In this paper, we address this lack by proposing a definition for immersive analytics and identifying some general research areas and specific research questions that will be important for the development of this field. We also present three case studies that, while all being examples of what we would consider immersive analytics, present different challenges, and opportunities. These serve to demonstrate the breadth of immersive analytics and illustrate how the framework proposed in this paper applies to practical research.
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    Immersive Archaeology
    Ogle, J. Todd; Skarbez, Richard (2018-05-01)
    We propose a system which integrates a high-fidelity immersive virtual environment based on ground-truth 3D scanning data from archaeological sites augmented with ethnohistoric data in the form of archival records, photos, models of artifacts, prior publications and reports, etc. for in virtuo analysis of corroborating evidence and the results of fieldwork. The post-excavation analysis phase is typically the most time-consuming aspect of the archaeology process. The proposed Immersive Archaeology System would primarily contribute to this post-excavation phase, connecting to and drawing together potentially relevant ethnohistoric data from archival stores that can be rapidly identified and presented to the archaeologist for analysis and interpretation of a site and its artifacts. This in turn could enable more reflexive archaeological practices wherein both field- and lab-based scientists are in close and regular collaboration via the immersive environment. Additional benefits of the adoption a system could include the development of curated virtual environments that could be employed in K-20 learning environments to engage learners in the analytical component of archaeology.
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    Virtual replicas of real places: Experimental investigations
    Skarbez, Richard; Bowman, Douglas A.; Ogle, J. Todd; Tucker, Thomas; Gabbard, Joseph L. (2021-07-13)
    The emergence of social virtual reality (VR) experiences, such as Facebook Spaces, Oculus Rooms, and Oculus Venues, will generate increased interest from users who want to share real places (both personal and public) with their fellow users in VR. At the same time, advances in scanning and reconstruction technology are making the realistic capture of real places more and more feasible. These complementary pressures mean that the representation of real places in virtual reality will be an increasingly common use case for VR. Despite this, there has been very little research into how users perceive such replicated spaces. This paper reports the results from a series of three user studies investigating this topic. Taken together, these results show that getting the scale of the space correct is the most important factor for generating a "feeling of reality", that it is important to avoid incoherent behaviors (such as floating objects), and that lighting makes little difference to perceptual similarity.