I've recently been involved in a data warehousing project, and of course I immediately thought how useful it would be to be able to represent vast volumes of data in an immersive 3D environment, to be able to walk through or fly over the data, to 'experience' it. Two videos released this week demonstrate the ongoing efforts to do exactly that using environments such as Second Life. The work from Green Phosphor below shows data from a spreadsheet be in displayed immediately in Second Life as a grid of 3D bars, dynamically updatable.
This is great, but only a first step. I imagine the data being represented in a much bigger way that can be flown over or through. But it's a great start.
The other is a video of the new ThinkBalm 'data garden'.
This is an attempt to represent the results of their report on the business value of immersive environments in an immersive way again in Second Life. I should say that I haven't had time to explore the data garden in Second Life itself yet, but I think the video highlights one problem with using video clips to demo these environments. It's impossible to see the value of the immersive technology from the video. Frankly I found myself heaving a huge sigh of relief each time the video zoomed in on the 2D graph - at least that made sense! Many of the things in the garden seem to be using 3D for the sake of it without considering the value added. So I love the idea, but the video just doesn't convince even me, a real 3D evangelist. I'll post more observations after I've visited the garden 'for real'.
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Who, What, Why?
Enterprise uses of Immersive Environments and Virtual World technology for collaboration. As CTO of vComm Solutions and co-founder of Flying Island I'm particularly interested in the ways that collaborative 3D immersive environments might help bring dispersed teams together
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Two new data visualisation videos
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Re: Two new data visualisation videos
by
Dusan Writer
on Thu 30 Jul 2009 17:23 BST | Permanent Link
Great summary - I felt the same way....the Green Phosphor thing was a great demo to give a sense of what's possible, although the execution is still a little, hmm, granular maybe is the word.
I also had a similar feeling about ThinkBalm's garden. None of the displays gave me a sense that "Wow, yes, thank GOD this is in 3D otherwise I wouldn't understand it" - a really well developed PowerPoint (a Presentation Zen kind of thing with some video maybe) could be just as effective. When Erica blogged about how the data garden helped her remember the stats better and was easier to access than flipping through a report - well, that just kind of stretched the boundaries of credulity. (She proposes that when she's on a call with someone, it's easier to LOG IN to SL, cam around the data garden, and find the stat than it is to, well, turn the pages of the report and find the chart she needs). 3D visualization in virtual worlds has a LONG way to go. It's a good rhetorical device when you're already in the 3D space, but other than some of the GIS stuff out there I haven't yet seen a truly shining example that belongs in an Edward Tufte book. Re: Two new data visualisation videos
by
neilC
on Thu 30 Jul 2009 17:34 BST | Profile | Permanent Link
Thanks Dusan. I've been trying to get my head around data warehousing, and in my googling I notice that there is an issue with teaching the whole multidimensional data cube type stuff. It's just hard. I've been wondering if this might be a genuine use case for virtual environments - teaching with interactive visualisations of projections of the datasets onto different axes, ability for people to move through the data volume and so on. If only I had time to try it :-)
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