Survey of Immersive Analytics

Immersive analytics (IA) is a new term referring to the use of immersive technologies for data analysis. Yet such applications are not new, and numerous contributions have been made in the last three decades. However, no survey reviewing all these contributions is available. Here we propose a survey of IA from the early nineties until the present day, describing how rendering technologies, data, sensory mapping, and interaction means have been used to build IA systems, as well as how these systems have been evaluated. The conclusions that emerge from our analysis are that: multi-sensory aspects of IA are under-exploited, the 3DUI and VR community knowledge regarding immersive interaction is not sufficiently utilised, the IA community should focus on converging towards best practices, as well as aim for real life IA systems.

Automated summary

This study reviews immersive analytics research since the early nineties and points out some shortcomings in current research, including underestimation of multi-sensory aspects and underutilization of immersive interaction knowledge. It suggests that the IA community should converge towards best practices and aim for real-life IA systems.