A Study of the Human Comprehension of Building Categories Based on Different 3D Building Representations

Virtual 3D cities are becoming increasingly important as a means of visually communicating diverse urban-related information. Since humans are the direct recipients of this information transfer, it is vital that the 3D city representations account for the humans' spatial cognition. Thus, our long-term goal is providing a model for the effective perception-aware visual communication of urban- or building-related semantic information via geometric 3D building representations which induce a maximum degree of perceptual insight in the user's mind. A first step towards this goal is to get a deeper understanding of a human's cognitive experience of virtual 3D cities. In this context, the paper presents a user study on the human ability to perceive building categories, e.g. residential home, office building, building with shops etc., from geometric 3D building representations. The study reveals various dependencies between geometric properties of the 3D representations and the perceptibility of the building categories. Knowledge about which geometries are relevant, helpful or obstructive for perceiving a specific building category is derived. The importance and usability of such knowledge is demonstrated based on a perception-guided 3D building abstraction process.