Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
•
Unlike a plane, a surface of a sphere wraps around back onto
itself. This has possibilities for a Gestalt association of
relationships between nearby objects - on a plane, a visual
marker at the edge of a plane will be seen as being removed
from most of the other data, but on a sphere there is no
boundary and therefore no positioning at the edge.
Fig. 2.3.
Circos [Krz09], Sunburst [Sta00], Super Mario Galaxy.
Potential drawbacks include:
•
Increased implementation effort
, e.g. ensuring that relative
sizes are preserved at the poles and equator.
•
Occlusion
, as information on the backside of the sphere is
potentially hidden or possibly more difficult to use.
•
Limitations
- there have been a number of 3D info viz spheres
in the past that have not been broadly adopted, probably due to
limitations with spherical representations or interactions.
As an example of the potential limitations of spheres, spherical
interfaces of images and/or videos organized around a sphere have existed
for more than 10 years (c.f. Fig 2.4), their availability including
commercial interfaces (e.g. Vizible [Gal03]). In comparison, major
commercial image search engines use a flat two dimensional interface.
There could be many reasons, including technical limitations, such as
lesser availability of 3D capable hardware on personal computers, or
possibly other issues: a 2D layout of images can provide more pixels
devoted to images, tighter packing of images, and an already familiar
scroll-bar interface for navigation.
Search WWH ::
Custom Search