Effects of tiled high-resolution display on basic visualization and navigation tasks

Large high-resolution screens are becoming increasingly available and less expensive. This creates potential advantages for data visualization in that more dense data and fine details are viewable at once. Also, less navigation may be needed to see more data. However, little work has been done to determine the effectiveness of large high-resolution displays, especially for basic low-level data visualization and navigation tasks. This paper describes an exploratory study on the effects of a large tiled display with a resolution of 3840x3072 as compared to two smaller displays (1560x2048 and 1280x1024). We conclude that, with finely detailed data, higher resolution displays that use physical navigation significantly outperform smaller displays that use pan and zoom navigation. Qualitatively, we also conclude that use of the larger display is less stressful and creates a better sense of confidence than the smaller displays.