Visualizations of symbols in a horizontal multiple viewer 3D display environment

In this paper we present a visualization environment for collaborative and co-located displays of geospatially related data for command and control. We first describe the working principle of a novel horizontal display that is aimed at providing high resolution stereoscopic 3D visualizations simultaneously to a group of up to four observers. This display environment opens up new ways to present view-dependent visual content within a shared workspace. For this environment we propose frontoparallel presentations of conventional symbols that are 3D presentations of 2D symbols which appear virtually oriented towards the line of sight of the observer. In an experiment we compare frontoparallel symbols with flat symbols i.e. symbols that are presented in the horizontal plane of the display. The results of our study indicate that frontoparallel symbols in a stereoscopic view are perceived and identified faster than symbols presented flat in relation to the plane of the display.