Urban DataSphere: Exploring Immersive Multiview Visualizations in Cities

Résumé En

Urban immersion is an important and recurring step in an urbanist's work. With the increasing availability of data regarding various aspects of a city, this immersion now involves getting a visual overview of said data within the urban context. Challenges arise from the desire to have a broad overview while remaining focused on the immediate surroundings of the area under study. We propose a novel method for visualizing geocoded data in virtual city models that uses stereographic projection of the data to a sphere surrounding the viewer. The data is separated and bent upwards from the ground plane, utilizing otherwise unused visual space above the horizon, creating an overview of more distant data, while keeping the city's geometry and close-by spatial relations intact. Seamless transitions to and from the familiar flat top-down view provide added interactivity and intuitive navigation.