VI. The State of the Art
- No established, general methodologies for creating a 3D Visualisation
- New and active area of research.
- Infinite number of ways to represent abstract data => many considerations for the architect:
- Rank data in importance
- Process the raw data (multidimensional scaling, principal components analysis, linear and non-linear transformations, neural networks, etc.)
- Determine level of accessibility (i.e. how much visual mining will the user need to do before they reach the data?)
- Mapping of the data onto visual attributes
- Choose an appropriate rendering technique depending heavily on the quantity and type of data to be visualised (e.g. Pixel-mapping, Glyphs, Worlds-within-worlds, Cityscapes)
- Determine the functionality and appearance of both the 2D and 3D GUI
- In what form will the data be fed into the visualisation? (e.g. database, real-time feed)