How EvoStreets Are Observed in Three-Dimensional and Virtual Reality Environments
Marcel Steinbeck, Rainer Koschke, Marc O. Rüdel · 2020
When analyzing software systems, a large amount of data accumulates. In order to assist developers in the preparation, evaluation, and understanding of findings, different visualization techniques have been developed. Due to recent progress in immersive virtual reality, existing visualization tools were ported to this environment. However, three-dimensional and virtual reality environments have different advantages and disadvantages, and by transferring concepts, such as layout algorithms and user interaction mechanisms, more or less one-to-one, the characteristics of these environments are neglected. In order to develop techniques adapting to the circumstance of a particular environment, more research in this field is necessary. In previously conducted case studies, we compared EvoStreets deployed in three different environments: 2D, 2.5D, and virtual reality. We found evidence that movement patterns—path length, average speed, and occupied volume—differ significantly between the 2.5D and virtual reality environments for some of the tasks that had to be solved by 34 participants in a controlled experiment. In this paper, we analyze the results of this experiment in more details, to study if not only movement is affected by these environments, but also the way how EvoStreets are observed. Although we could not find enough evidence that the number of viewpoints and their duration differ significantly, we found indications that in virtual reality viewpoints are located closer to the EvoStreets and that the distance between viewpoints is shorter. Based on our previous results and the findings of this paper, we present visualization and user interaction concepts specific to the kind of environment.