Hybrid Futures
Multi-sensory immersion in big data
Immersive Analytics
While it would seem counter intuitive, research from psychology suggests that virtual environments dense with information are easier to process than simplified graphic encoding – if there is alignment of the data representation with human ecological perception of natural environments. Just as human perception can hone in on subtle shifts and nuances when navigating a rich natural environment, occupying a data scape within VR affords embodied exploration of emergent trends and anomalies in datascapes. To this end, a prototype immersive analytics application based on a terrain metaphor has been developed. The application uses the terrain, animation and spatial sound capability of the Unity game engine to assign multiple data variables to a range of spatial, graphic, kinetic and aural attributes. Several million data values are represented in one sector of the terrain, with a data streaming module pre-loading data into adjacent sectors to enable application to big data sets.