Perspective View Technology and Models

PSE is conducting award winning research into the problem of how to visualize three dimensional (3-D) objects and environments. 3-D displays (or displays with 3-D perspective views of scenes) seem to provide a natural, and increasingly affordable, solution to the need for conveying 3-D environments. But do 3-D displays really improve situation awareness and task performance, or do they actually hinder performance and place people at risk?

In a series of experiments, we have determined the where, what, how and why of 3-D display use:

Where involves how to depict the layout of a scene or environment.
What involves how to depict the objects that are represented.
How involves how the information that is represented is put to use.
Why involves developing a quantitative model of 3-D view perception

Our research suggests that the specific demands of the user's task can significantly impact the answers to these questions.

Where

We find that three-dimensional perspective views displayed on flat screens (3-D views) effectively integrate all three spatial dimensions and are therefore very good for understanding 3-D shapes and scenes. However, for making precise spatial judgments, there is no substitute for the faithful representation of distances and angles found in 2-D views.

What

3-D views are often populated with realistic 3-D icons. Although often preferred by users, 3-D icons can lead to poor identification performance when the represented objects are visually similar. Abstract 2-D symbols can better differentiate objects lead to better user performance. Therefore, standard military symbologies, or a new hybrid "Symbicon" symbology that we have developed, are preferable to realistic 3-D icons.

How

More complex tasks potentially contain a variety of task demands and will require combinations of 2-D and 3-D views so that the most effective view is available at each point in time.

We have proposed an interface concept called Orient and Operate for designing command and control displays where users orient to a 3-D view of a scene but then switch to 2-D views to interact or operate on it.

Why

(a) Cross-Scaling Model. We are currently investigating the cognitive and perceptual principles that underlie and explain the task dependencies on viewing angle. We can mathematically model users' misperceptions of 3-D views with the novel conjecture that users possess a misconception about how linear perspective affects their views of scenes. We are testing the model and finding that it has several important implications for the design and usage of 3-D views.

(b) Naïve Realism theory. We have developed an overarching theory to explain the whole body of our 3D work and the fact that users like displays they under-perform with. The theory is called "Naïve Realism". Naïve Realism appears to stem from a system of folk misconceptions about the very nature of what perception is and what it delivers us.

References and Downloads:

Journal Articles

"Naive Realism: Misplaced Faith in Realistic Displays," by Harvey Smallman and Mark St John. From Ergonomics in Design: The Magazine of Human Factors Applications, Volume 13, Number 3, Summer 2005. Copyright 2005 by Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, all rights reserved. Used with permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or stored in any form without prior written permission of HFES, http://hfes.org
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St. John, M., Cowen, M. B., Smallman, H. S., & Oonk, H. M. (2001). The use of 2-D and 3-D displays for shape understanding vs. relative position tasks. Human Factors, 43, 79-98. Winner Jerome H. Ely, HFES Award for the best Human Factors paper of 2001
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Smallman, H. S., St. John, M., Oonk, H. M., & Cowen, M. B. (2001). Information Availability in 2D and 3D Displays. IEEE: Computer Graphics and Application (special issue on Applied Perception), 21, 51-57.
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Selected Conference Papers

Smallman, H. S. (2005) Overarching Principles of Display Design. Proceedings of the 49th Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. (pp. 1554-1555). Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, Santa Monica, CA.
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Smallman, H. S. (2003). Naïve misconceptions about perspective projection: A new model for the anisotropy of 3-D visual space.
Journal of Vision, 3(12), 24a

Smallman, H.S., Manes, D., & Cowen, M.B. (2003) Measuring and modeling the misinterpretation of 3-D perspective views. Proceedings of the 47th Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. (pp. 1615-1619). Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, Santa Monica, CA.
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Smallman, H.S., St. John, M., & Cowen, M.B. (2002) Use and misuse of linear perspective in the perceptual reconstruction of 3-D perspective view displays. Proceedings of the 46th Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (pp. 1560-1564). Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, Santa Monica, CA.
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Smallman, H. S., St. John, M., Oonk, H. M., & Cowen, M. B. (2001). SYMBICONS: A hybrid symbology that combines the best elements of SYMBols and ICONS. In Proceedings of the 45th Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (pp. 110-114). Santa Monica, CA: Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.
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St. John, M., Smallman, H. S., Bank, T. E., & Cowen, M. B. (2001). Tactical route planning using two-dimensional and three-dimensional views of terrain. In Proceedings of the 45th Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (pp. 1409-1413). Santa Monica, CA: Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.
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Smallman, H. S., St. John, M., Oonk, H. M., & Cowen, M. B. (2000). When beauty is only skin deep: 3-D realistic icons are harder to identify than conventional 2-D military symbols. In Proceedings of the 44th Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (pp. 480-483). Santa Monica, CA: Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.
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