V-Mail: 3D-Enabled Correspondence About Spatial Data on (Almost) All Your Devices

作     者：Nam, Jung Who Isenberg, Tobias Keefe, Daniel F. 

作者机构：Univ Minnesota Minneapolis MN 55455 USA Univ Paris Saclay CNRS Inria LISN F-91190 Gif Sur Yvette France 

出 版 物：《IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VISUALIZATION AND COMPUTER GRAPHICS》 (IEEE Trans Visual Comput Graphics)

年 卷 期：2024年第30卷第4期

页      面：1853-1867页

核心收录：

学科分类：0808[工学-电气工程] 08[工学] 0835[工学-软件工程] 

基　　金：National Science Foundation 

主　　题：Data visualization Three-dimensional displays Annotations Spatial databases Collaboration Software Task analysis Communication human-computer interaction immersive analytics storytelling visualization of scientific 3D data 

摘      要：We present V-Mail, a framework of cross-platform applications, interactive techniques, and communication protocols for improved multi-person correspondence about spatial 3D datasets. Inspired by the daily use of e-mail, V-Mail seeks to enable a similar style of rapid, multi-person communication accessible on any device;however, it aims to do this in the new context of spatial 3D communication, where limited access to 3D graphics hardware typically prevents such communication. The approach integrates visual data storytelling with data exploration, spatial annotations, and animated transitions. V-Mail data stories are exported in a standard video file format to establish a common baseline level of access on (almost) any device. The V-Mail framework also includes a series of complementary client applications and plugins that enable different degrees of story co-authoring and data exploration, adjusted automatically to match the capabilities of various devices. A lightweight, phone-based V-Mail app makes it possible to annotate data by adding captions to the video. These spatial annotations are then immediately accessible to team members running high-end 3D graphics visualization systems that also include a V-Mail client, implemented as a plugin. Results and evaluation from applying V-Mail to assist communication within an interdisciplinary science team studying Antarctic ice sheets confirm the utility of the asynchronous, cross-platform collaborative framework while also highlighting some current limitations and opportunities for future work.