Improvements in the speed of 3D graphics rendering hardware have been accompanied by even more drastic increases in the size of displayed models. Full-system CAD, 3D model scanners, procedurally generated models, and visualization data sets are now approaching hundreds of millions or even billions of polygons in size. Researchers trying to display these models have been forced either to reduce display speed and interactivity, or instead to reduce the fidelity of the displayed views of their models. What are the best methods for preserving visual fidelity as model complexity is automatically reduced or "simplified"? What is the most effective way of striking the display speed vs. visual fidelity compromise? And in the increasingly important graphics application of visualization, how can we preserve the meaningful elements of the displayed data, and make users effective managers of information complexity? This research will take its three complementary directions from the three above questions. The PI will develop prototype systems and investigate their effectiveness with user studies. Many of these studies will take place in the context of driving applications developed for existing collaborations with colleagues in academia and the gaming industry. Specific goals will include the development and evaluation of automatic methods for measuring fidelity; an examination of the hypothesis that fidelity control should minimize visual error, whether it is introduced by compromises in visual fidelity or display speed; and for abstract information visualization, study of fidelity measures and summarization techniques not necessarily inspired by knowledge of perception in the natural world. While many technical solutions have addressed the issues of measuring similarity and summarizing complex data, only a few of them have been evaluated in rigorous usability studies. This research will fill this gap, producing knowledge, guidelines, heuristics and software that will improve the usability of interactive 3D graphics applications.
