  The visualization of a network influences the quality of the mental map that
the viewer develops to understand the network. In this study, we investigate
the effects of a 3D immersive visualization environment compared to a
traditional 2D desktop environment on the comprehension of a network's
structure. We compare the two visualization environments using three
tasks--interpreting network structure, memorizing a set of nodes, and
identifying the structural changes--commonly used for evaluating the quality of
a mental map in network visualization. The results show that participants were
able to interpret network structure more accurately when viewing the network in
an immersive environment, particularly for larger networks. However, we found
that 2D visualizations performed better than immersive visualization for tasks
that required spatial memory.
