AN IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE: VISUALIZING LARGE-SCALE CLIMATE DATA USING VIRTUAL REALITY AND INFRARED HAND-TRACKING TECHNOLOGY

Abstract

Recently, interest in understanding Earth’s climate has risen in light of anthropogenic climate change. However, effective climate data visualization tools for studying climate remain largely outdated.We proposed the use of virtual reality to more effectively visualize climate data, implemented a prototype climate visualization tool using Unreal Engine, and conducted a focus group to gain expert insight and advice for evaluating and improving our visualization tool. Our regional view displayed the temperature of the Chesapeake Bay, surrounded by topographic data in one cohesive visualization, while our global view transformed and displayed climate data on a virtual globe using a perceptually-uniform color texture and incorporated an animated particle field to visualize vectorized data. Finally, we used the Leap Motion Controller to facilitate interaction with the visualizations through hand gestures. Overall, participants found that three-dimensional visualizations were more intuitive than two-dimensional visualizations and suggested areas for further improvement in the future.