Exploring the Effect of Tiling on Large Displays

彬彬

1 Introduction

Over the past several years tiled displays have slowly evolved from

expensive blended-projection systems to Liquid Crystal Display

(LCD) tiled displays. The LCD systems are typically cheaper to

cons***ct and maintain, but the bezels introduced at screen edges

are often a common source of complaints. Our long term research

goal is to settle the debate between the two technologies to see if

there really is any perceivable benefit to one versus the other. The

work outlined here presents the first in a series of comparative experiments.

Figure 1: The Immersive Visualization Center at Texas A&M University

consists of a single continuous curved screen. In this image

software seams are introduced to investigate the effect of tiling on

performance in a navigation task.

2 Experiment

We investigated performance on a simple navigation and wayfinding

task in each type of system, one a low-cost, tiled, multiscreen

immersive visualization system and the other a more expensive,

continuous screen, immersive visualization facility. The low

cost system (LCD) is designed using off-the-shelf components and

cons***cted by arranging LCD displays in a curved tiled layout.

The expensive system (IVC) is a Rockwell-Collins semi-rigid, rear

projected, continuous curved screen. With the low cost paradigm,

physical seams are introduced into the image where the displays

are tiled. Our hypothesis is that the tiled system presents an equivalent

visual experience for navigation and way-finding tasks, despite

the separating seams introduced by connecting the screens. Each

immersive system was evaluated by measuring timely task performance

in a psychophysical experiment. There were 20 participants,

ten of which viewed the LCD system first and ten viewed the IVC

system first. There were five conditions which manipulated the independent

variable,seam size (please see supplemental material for

further details). We introduced software seams in the IVC to mimic

the physical bezels present in the LCD system. In each condition

participants were asked to navigate five separate routes, labeled A,

B, C, D and E. Each route was indicated by a starting point and a

target end point. A 2D map was clearly marked with start and end

points was provided. Participants could view the map for as long

as they wished, but typically only studied it for a minute or two

before declaring themselves ready to navigate the Virtual Environment

(VE). After studying the map participants were placed in the

e-mail: ann@viz.tamu.edu

VE located at the start point. The task was to navigate as quickly

as possible through the 3D environment, beginning from their start

position and finishing at the indicated end position. This is known

as a goal-directed navigation, or primed navigation task [Darken

et al. 2001].

3 Results

Time to target per participant across system was recorded and compared

in an effort to gauge performance. As previously mentioned,

our premise is that faster times to reach the end position demonstrate

higher spatial understanding and hence performance in the

system. Average “end time” across participant in each environment

was compared. A two-way ANOVA showed no significant differences

across seam conditions:F(4) = 2:54; p < 0:04 or across

route map F(4) = 31:54; p < :005. This suggests that both seam

size and route influence performance time, but there is no evidence

of an interaction between the two F(16) = 0:63; p > 0:5. These

results suggest that, for this navigation task, the presence of seams

did not adversely impact the performance of simple navigation in

the tiled display environments.

4 Conclusion

The goal of this work was to show that navigation performance is

equal (on average) in systems with or without seams, and, therefore,

not impacted by the size or presence of display seams, be

they physical or virtual (introduced by the software). We compared

performance on a simple goal-directed navigation task in both immersive

systems and discovered that no significant differences exist

across systems, which validates our hypothesis that there is no di***ption

to the visual experience of the user when navigating a VE

populated with physical or software seams. By comparing navigation

to a target across seamed VE systems, it appears that seams

have no significant impact on the time taken to complete a simple

guided navigation and way-finding task. In fact, in some cases participants

actually performed navigation tasks better with the presence

of seams. Informal comments indicated that some users actually

preferred the presence of seams as they helped to partition the

scene and made navigation more manageable. This also may be due

to an extension the phenomenon discovered by several researchers

in which the separation of displays helps users to streamline tasks

in 2D desktop systems [Mackinlay 2004]. Clearly, much work remains

to be done in this area. The experiment represents the beginning

of a larger study in which we hope to fully investigate the

impact of seams on performance across immersive systems.

References

DARKEN, R. P., PETERSON, B., AND ORIENTATION, B. S. 2001.

Spatial orientation, wayfinding, and representation. In In K. M.

Stanney (Ed.), Handbook of Virtual Environments: Design, Implementation,

and Applications, Erlbaum, 493–518.

MACKINLAY, J. D. 2004. Wideband displays: Mitigating multiple

monitor seams. In CHI 2004 Extended Abstracts, ACM Press,

ACM Press, 1521–1524.

奇

不错啊　经典

菜刀吻电线

凡系斑竹滴话要听；凡系朋友滴帖要顶

菜刀吻电线

此地無銀。。。

奇

先垫一块，再说鸟

1250

感谢分享！

1250

感谢分享！