Week 11 Summary
Pop Through Button Devices for VE Navigation and Interaction
A pop through button is a tri-state device that has two clearly distinguished activation states activated by pressing lightly or firmly on the button’s surface. They improve interactions in the virtual environment. The paper describes two input devices: FingerSleeve and TriggerGun
The TriggerGun is physically similar to commercial flight control-based joysticks. The TriggerGun has two pop through buttons that are embedded into a clay frame; one button is triggered by the index finger and is characterized by a relatively long finger travel distance, the other button is compact and is mounted at a 45 degree angle on top of the frame for thumb activation.
The FingerSleeve, is a device that can be worn on the index finger of either the left or right hand. The frame is made out of an elastic fabric and a small piece of flexible fabric. The buttons on the sleeve can be located based on the person’s personal preference.
A couple of navigation techniques were tried using the pop through button devices. These include Zoomback and LaserGrab. The ZoomBack technique allows the user to navigate in the virtual environment by lightly pressing the button. The user translates in the direction toward the target he points to, and returns to the original direction on releasing it. The LaserGrab uses the relative distance between the user’s head and hand to control the movement of the user towards the targeted object.
One real application of using pop through buttons was in CavePainting described in the paper. The pop through devices provided additional functionality solving a number of ergonomic problems present in the older forms of interaction.
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