A Survey of Designs for Combined 2D+3D Visual Representations

TL;DR

This survey reviews 105 studies from 2012 to 2022 on how 2D and 3D visual representations are combined, analyzing their design approaches, relationships, and providing guidelines for effective integration.

Contribution

It systematically categorizes and analyzes methods of linking 2D and 3D visualizations, offering a comprehensive design space and guidelines for future visualization systems.

Findings

Identified common design patterns for linking 2D and 3D representations.

Developed a classification framework based on visual environment and relationships.

Provided practical guidelines for designing combined 2D+3D visualizations.

Abstract

We examine visual representations of data that make use of combinations of both 2D and 3D data mappings. Combining 2D and 3D representations is a common technique that allows viewers to understand multiple facets of the data with which they are interacting. While 3D representations focus on the spatial character of the data or the dedicated 3D data mapping, 2D representations often show abstract data properties and take advantage of the unique benefits of mapping to a plane. Many systems have used unique combinations of both types of data mappings effectively. Yet there are no systematic reviews of the methods in linking 2D and 3D representations. We systematically survey the relationships between 2D and 3D visual representations in major visualization publications -- IEEE VIS, IEEE TVCG, and EuroVis -- from 2012 to 2022. We closely examined 105 papers where 2D and 3D representations are connected visually, interactively, or through animation. These approaches are designed based on their visual environment, the relationships between their visual representations, and their possible layouts. Through our analysis, we introduce a design space as well as provide design guidelines for effectively linking 2D and 3D visual representations.