Cost-benefit Analysis of Visualization in Virtual Environments
This work addresses the cost-effectiveness challenge for visualization practitioners seeking to leverage VEs, but it appears incremental as it builds on existing theories and evidence without introducing new methods or data.
The paper tackles the problem of high costs limiting the use of virtual environments (VEs) for visualization applications by conducting a cost-benefit analysis from an information-theoretic perspective, aiming to explain differential benefits and outline future development pathways.
Visualization and virtual environments (VEs) have been two interconnected parallel strands in visual computing for decades. Some VEs have been purposely developed for visualization applications, while many visualization applications are exemplary showcases in general-purpose VEs. Because of the development and operation costs of VEs, the majority of visualization applications in practice are yet to benefit from the capacity of VEs. In this paper, we examine this perplexity from an information-theoretic perspective. Our objectives are to conduct cost-benefit analysis on typical VE systems (including augmented and mixed reality, theatre-based systems, and large powerwalls), to explain why some visualization applications benefit more from VEs than others, and to sketch out pathways for the future development of visualization applications in VEs. We support our theoretical propositions and analysis using theories and discoveries in the literature of cognitive sciences and the practical evidence reported in the literatures of visualization and VEs.