Evaluating performance in tiled displays: navigation and wayfinding

• Authors: Ann M. McNamara;Frederic Parke;Mat Sanford
• Venue: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Virtual Reality Continuum and Its Applications in Industry
• Year: 2011

We compare user-interaction and performance on a navigation and way finding task across two separate immersive displays: a low-cost, tiled, multi-screen immersive visualization system and a more expensive, continuous screen, immersive visualization facility. The low-cost system is designed with economy in mind and uses off-the-shelf components. It is constructed by arranging LCD displays in a curved tiled layout. The expensive system is a Rockwell-Collins semi-rigid, rear projected, continuous curved screen. With the low cost paradigm, physical seams are introduced into the image where the displays are tiled. In contrast the expensive system presents a continuous image. We hypothesize that the tiled system presents an equivalent visual experience, despite the physical seams introduced by connecting the screens. Both systems were tested through experimentation designed to measure performance in a navigation and way finding task. Experimental results indicate that there are no significant differences in task performance across display type, which means that for navigational tasks of this category, user performance is not impacted by the interrupted image in the tiled display. Three-Dimensional (3D) immersive visualization systems provide a novel platform for presentation of complex datasets and Virtual Environments (VEs). The objective of the research presented here is to compare user-interaction and performance between two immersive displays: a low-cost, tiled, multi-screen immersive visualization system and a more expensive, continuous screen, immersive visualization facility. The low cost system is designed using off-the-shelf components and constructed by arranging LCD displays in a curved tiled layout. The expensive system is a Rockwell-Collins semi-rigid, rear projected, continuous curved screen. With the low cost paradigm, physical seams are introduced into the image where the displays are tiled. Our hypothesis is that the tiled system presents an equivalent visual experience for navigation and wayfinding tasks, despite the separating seams introduced by connecting the screens. Each immersive system was evaluated by measuring timely task performance. We compared performance on a simple goal-directed navigation task in both systems. We introduced software seams of varying size in the continuous display, but also measured performance in the continuous system with no seams. The seams in the LCD display are physical seams, and obviously remain present during task performance for that system. Results show that no significant differences exist across systems, which validates our hypothesis that there is no disruption to the visual experience of the user when navigating a VE populated with physical or software seams.