Multiscale 3D Reference Visualization

Abstract

Reference grids are commonly used in design software to help users judge distances and understand the orientation of the virtual workspace. Despite their ubiquity in 3D graphics applications, little research has gone into important design considerations of the 3D reference grids themselves, which directly impact their usefulness. We have developed two new techniques; the multiscale reference grid and position pegs that form a consistent foundation for presenting relative scale and position information to the user. Our design of a multiscale reference grid consistently subdivides and coalesces gridlines, based on the computation of a closeness metric, while ensuring that there are neither too many nor too few subdivisions. Position pegs extend the grid so that objects that are lying above or below the ground plane can be brought into a common environmental frame of reference without interfering with the grid or object data. We provide a stable analytic viewpoint-determined result, solving several depth cue problems, that is independent of viewing projection.