An Immersive Visualization Study on Molecules Manipulation

Abstract

In the context of visualization and interaction with molecules, the representation of a 3D virtual environment potentially helps the understanding of data and structure manipulation that, in other case, would demand too much effort to be interpreted in a conventional way. Additionally, the exploration of these 3D environments in an immersive way may also improve the usability regarding velocity, precision and comfort. In this work, we study the benefits of molecular manipulation in virtual environments based on Head-Mounted Displays and natural 3D interfaces. We implemented a virtual environment to visualize and manipulate molecules, and tested it with users in order to verify the advantages of the immersive approach against the desktop one. Results achieved demonstrate the benefits of using immersive visualization for this specific purpose.