Referents are often used to enhance scale perception in immersive visualizations. Common referent designs include the considerations of referent layout (side-by-side vs. in-situ) and referent size (small vs. medium vs. large). This paper introduces a controlled user study to assess how different referent designs affect the efficiency and accuracy of scale perception across different data scales, on the performance of the size-matching task in the virtual environment. Our results reveal that in-situ layouts significantly enhance accuracy and confidence across various data scales, particularly with large referents. Linear regression analyses further confirm that in-situ layouts exhibit greater resilience to changes in data scale. For tasks requiring efficiency, medium-sized referents emerge as the preferred choice. Based on these findings, we offer design guidelines for selecting referent layouts and sizes in immersive visualizations.

翻译：参考物常被用于增强沉浸式可视化中的尺度感知。常见的参考物设计包括参考物布局（并列式与原位式）和参考物大小（小、中、大）的考量。本文通过一项受控用户研究，评估不同参考物设计如何根据数据尺度变化影响尺度感知的效率与准确性，以及在虚拟环境中执行尺寸匹配任务的表现。我们的研究结果显示，在各种数据尺度下，原位布局显著提升了准确性和信心，尤其在使用较大参考物时更为明显。线性回归分析进一步证实，原位布局对数据尺度的变化展现出更强的鲁棒性。对于注重效率的任务，中等大小的参考物成为更优选择。基于这些发现，我们为沉浸式可视化中参考物布局与大小的选择提供了设计指南。