[Week 12 Summary] Exploring 3D Navigation: Combining Speed-coupled Flying with Orbiting and A Survey of Design Issues in Spatial Input
Combining Speed-coupled Flying with Orbiting
In their paper, the authors employ a task-based approach to construct a taxonomy of 3D-navigation techniques and then proceed to describe a couple of navigation techniques in this context, also proposing new techniques with the aid of the taxonomy.
Primarily employing a task-based approach to drive the classification process, the author’s sub-divide navigation into the sub-tasks of exploration, search and investigation. They also use Travel Control – the abstract solution to the user’s goal and the User Interface as features for the classification.
The authors subsequently describe a couple of techniques based on their proposed taxonomy, including, Object Manipulation and Ghost Copy (inspection), Inverse Fog/Scaling and Ephemeral World Compression (search). The authors also describe a couple of tasks that are formed by combining a couple of existing navigational techniques, appropriately naming them moded tasks. One of them, Possession and Rubberneck navigation allows the user to see the world from the point of view of another object as well as allowing for simultaneous movement as well as view control.
The second moded technique, which also lends the paper its name, aims to allow for seamless walking around in an environment, getting an overview and examining objects. This method couples user-controlled speed to height and tilt in the the virtual environment, thus allowing for quick acquisition of survey knowledge as well as allowing for the exploration and search tasks.
The authors carry out user studies to evaluate their, and note that speed-couple flying allows users to more efficiently navigate in certain virtual environments. The studies also instructed the addition of a gliding behavior to Flying with Orbit’s landing condition. Another interesting aspect of one of the user-study experiments was the use of display’s size as a parameter for evaluation, which revealed that the use of bigger displays improved performance.
A Survey of Design Issues in Spatial Input
In this papers, the authors present a survey of design issues for developing effective 3D user interfaces, with their major contribution being the integration of different results and observations into a common framework.
The authors focus on human perceptual and ergonomic issues for organizing their thoughts. A set of human perception issues deal with the fact that human perception involves experiencing three-dimensional space rather than understanding it. The authors state that humans are not endowed with capabilities to understand abstract 3D space, but we are able to carry out our actions in it by experiencing it. The authors describe some issues that arise due to this, such as the requirement for spatial referencing, bias for two handed interactions and multi-sensory feedback. The authors also describe the efficacy of multi-dimensional task performance varies with whether the input dimensions are dependent (say x,y,size ), vs independent tasks. Dependent input dimension tasks are performed more efficiently by users.
The authors also describe some control metaphors for 3D interaction. adding a Ray-Casting metaphor to the one’s already described by Ware, and lay-out the design issues in dynamic target acquisition.
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