In this project, we study the problem space of occlusion in 3D environment and develop models and methods to reduce, or, in some special cases, eliminate the impact of occlusion on user efficiency and correctness in solving visual tasks. We believe that this will help improve the usability of 3D visualization on a broad scale, allowing designers to more readily adopt 3D computer graphics for their user applications without having to fear disorienting and alienating their users.

Our research on this problem is a multi-pronged approach:

  • View projection manipulation. Modifying the view projection to minimize occlusion.
  • Multiple views. Introducing additional views to disambiguate occlusion.
  • Transparency. Utilize dynamic transparency to allow occluded objects to be visible.
  • Navigation Guidance. Guide the user through 3D environments using computed tours from which all objects are visible.
  • Explosion. Direct manipulation explosion techniques for discovering and accessing occluded targets.
  • Awareness. Make the user aware of occluded objects through textual displays or on-scene labelling, etc.

2011

Waqas Javed, KyungTae Kim, Sohaib Ghani, Niklas Elmqvist (2011): Evaluating Physical/Virtual Occlusion Management Techniques for Horizontal Displays. In: Proceedings of INTERACT, pp. 391-408, 2011. (Type: Inproceeding | Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

2009

Niklas Elmqvist, Ulf Assarsson, Philippas Tsigas (2009): Dynamic Transparency for 3D Visualization: Design and Evaluation. In: International Journal of Virtual Reality, 8 (1), pp. 65–78, 2009. (Type: Article | Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

2008

Niklas Elmqvist, Philippas Tsigas (2008): A Taxonomy of 3D Occlusion Management for Visualization. In: IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 14 (5), pp. 1095–1109, 2008. (Type: Article | Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

2007

Niklas Elmqvist, Philippas Tsigas (2007): A Taxonomy of 3D Occlusion Management Techniques. In: Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality, pp. 51–58, 2007. (Type: Inproceeding | Abstract | Links | BibTeX)
Niklas Elmqvist, Philippas Tsigas (2007): View-Projection Animation for 3D Occlusion Management. In: Computers & Graphics, 31 (6), pp. 864–876, 2007. (Type: Article | Abstract | Links | BibTeX)
Niklas Elmqvist, Mihail Eduard Tudoreanu, Philippas Tsigas (2007): Tour Generation for Exploration of 3D Virtual Environments. In: Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology, pp. 207–210, 2007. (Type: Inproceeding | Abstract | Links | BibTeX)
Niklas Elmqvist, Mihail Eduard Tudoreanu (2007): Occlusion Management in Immersive and Desktop 3D Virtual Environments: Theory and Evaluation. In: International Journal of Virtual Reality, 6 (2), pp. 21–32, 2007. (Type: Article | Abstract | Links | BibTeX)
Niklas Elmqvist, Ulf Assarsson, Philippas Tsigas (2007): Employing Dynamic Transparency for 3D Occlusion Management: Design Issues and Evaluation. In: Proceedings of INTERACT, pp. 532–545, 2007. (Type: Inproceeding | Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

2006

Niklas Elmqvist, Philippas Tsigas (2006): View Projection Animation for Occlusion Reduction. In: Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces, pp. 471–475, 2006. (Type: Inproceeding | Abstract | Links | BibTeX)
Niklas Elmqvist, Mihail Eduard Tudoreanu (2006): Evaluating the Effectiveness of Occlusion Reduction Techniques for 3D Virtual Environments. In: Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology, pp. 9-18, 2006. (Type: Inproceeding | Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

2005

Niklas Elmqvist (2005): BalloonProbe: Reducing Occlusion in 3D using Interactive Space Distortion. In: Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology, pp. 134–137, 2005. (Type: Inproceeding | Abstract | Links | BibTeX)