period of projectNovember 2008 till December 2009

involved peopleDipl.-Ing. Sophie Stellmach

type of projectExtended Diploma Thesis Project

SVEETER - Gaze Visualizations for Virtual Environments on Vimeo.

Gaze Visualizations in 3D Virtual Environments

Beschreibung

Eye tracking technology allows the recording of eye movements for post-hoc analysis of visual attention. One of its major strengths and a reason for its popularity is presenting easily comprehensible, superimposed visualizations for two-dimensional stimuli - for example heat maps and gaze plots. However, such gaze visualization techniques do not adequately support interactive analysis of three-dimensional (3D) virtual environments (VE).

This work intends to facilitate eye tracking studies in 3D VEs by enhancing visual gaze analysis techniques and methodologies. For this purpose, a survey was conducted for investigating improvements of existing gaze analysis techniques. This led to the development of a taxonomy of gaze visualizations to determine strengths and weaknesses of current techniques. Based on feature requests from the survey and findings from the classification of gaze visualizations, a gaze analysis tool was developed that integrates visualizations for static 3D VEs. The implementation is based on the Tobii 1750 Eye Tracker, the XNA Framework, and Windows Forms.

The impact of this thesis is twofold: Firstly it helps eye tracking mature into a technology that can be used to easily investigate visual attention in simulation and, for example, serious gaming environments. For this purpose, a software solution is provided to generate and explore gaze visualizations in VEs. Secondly it serves as a foundation for future research into 3D visualizations of human gaze by providing the methodological and taxonomical framing for these visualization techniques.

Developed Gaze Visualizations

Based on common gaze visualization techniques, we present three novel techniques for depicting eye tracking data from three-dimensional virtual environments:

  • Path Visualizations
  • Models of Interest Timeline
  • Three-dimensional Attentional Maps

These visualizations have been integrated in the gaze analysis tool SVEETER.

 

Path Visualizations

The developed path visualizations can be divided into two categories: depiction of gaze sequences (fixations and saccades) and camera paths (camera positions and -orientations).

3D Scan Paths

3D Scan Paths - Type 1: Fixations are commonly represented by circles (for 2D data). Analog to this fixations can be depicted as spheres in 3D virtual environments.

3D Scan Paths

3D Scan Paths - Type 2: Instead of using directionless shapes for representing fixations (such as spheres), we investigated the possibility to employ cylinders. This way not only the fixation location and duration can be represented, but also a relation between the adaptable viewing position and distance can be established.

3D Camera Paths

3D Camera Paths: The user has the possibility to change his/her viewpoints. Thus, it is important to visualize how camera positions and angles have changed during the observation of a scene to better evaluate a viewer's behavior.

 

Models of Interest Timeline

Models of Interest Timeline

Models of Interest Timeline: The Models of Interest Timeline depicts viewed models in a clearly layouted timeline. For this purpose, each model is represented by a certain color.

Models of Interest Timeline

Models of Interest Timeline: The Models of Interest Timeline can also be used for limiting depicted scan and camera paths by setting dedicated markers to define periods of interest.

 

Attentional Maps

Attentional Maps

Projected Attentional Maps are 2D representations of 3D gaze data. A projected attentional map for the top view applying two different heat signatures is shown above.

Attentional Maps

Object-based Attentional Maps assign colors as model textures to indicate visual attractiveness of 3D objects. The above picture shows an object-based attentional map for two views.

Attentional Maps

Surface-based Attentional Maps display gaze fixation data as heat maps on 3D model surfaces. The image above shows a surface-based attentional map applying two heat signatures and employing different rendering options (displaying model mesh).

 

SVEETER

SVEETER

SVEETER: A screenshot of the gaze analysis tool SVEETER, that integrated the described gaze visualizations.

 

Diploma Theses within this Project

Related publications

  • Vorschaubild

    Stellmach, S., Nacke, L., Dachselt, R.:

    3D Attentional Maps - Aggregated Gaze Visualizations in Three-Dimensional Virtual Environments

    Proceedings of the International Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI 2010) (Rom, Italy, May 25-29, 2010).

    AVI 2010, ACM, ISBN 978-1-4503-0076-6, pp. 345-348.

    Downloads: Short Paper (3171KB), Poster (650KB)

  • Vorschaubild

    Stellmach, S., Nacke, L., Dachselt, R.:

    Advanced Gaze Visualizations for Three-dimensional Virtual Environments

    Proceedings of the 2010 Symposium on Eye-Tracking Research and Applications (Austin, TX, USA, March 22-24, 2010).

    ETRA 2010, ACM, ISBN 978-1-60558-994-7, pp. 109-112.

    Downloads: Short Paper (7124KB), Poster (3489KB)

  • Vorschaubild

    Stellmach, S., Nacke, L., Dachselt, R., Lindley, C.:

    Trends and Techniques in Visual Gaze Analysis

    Proceedings of the 5th Conference on Communication by Gaze Interaction (COGAIN '09) (Lyngby, Denmark, 2009).

    COGAIN 2009, The COGAIN Association, ISBN 978-87-643-0475-6, pp. 89-93.

    Downloads: Short paper (169KB)