The experience of using virtual reality for interactive spatial visualisation of environmental data

Virtual reality possesses various properties that have the potential to be beneficial for the visualisation of spatial data, including intuitive gestural affordances for looking around and interacting with data and the illusion of being physically located within a virtual space. However, some properties of the medium might also be detrimental to this purpose, such as limitations of the display technology and the possibility of motion sickness. While the medium is already being used for a variety of 3D visualisation purposes, there is no formulation of clear use-cases for virtual reality as a visualisation tool based on medium-specific considerations. Our work provides a preliminary overview towards this purpose by comparing two versions of an application for visualising environmental data in a mine: a virtual reality version and a standard desktop version. Using an exploratory approach with 26 participants and both qualitative and quantitative methods, the results highlight the ability of virtual reality to engage with spatial cognition but also some pitfalls in the design of user interfaces for interacting with large datasets.