Week 12 Summary
Exploring 3D Navigation: Combining Speed-coupled Flying with Orbiting
This paper describes task based taxonomy of navigation techniques for 3D virtual environment. Most Virtual Environment encompass more space than can be viewed from a single vantage point, it is very important for the user to navigate efficiently within the environment in order to obtain different views of the scene.
The paper categorizes existing navigation techniques to create a preliminary structure of navigation tasks. New navigation techniques are identified and created based on the missing areas in the design space.
Navigation is broken into three subtask- exploration, to gain survey knowledge; search, to locate an object or route and to travel to it; and inspection to establish and maintain a particular view of an object.
Following are the techniques presented in the paper: Object Manipulation and Ghost copy, users drag on an object and manipulate a copy of the object, placing it in the position and orientation from which it needs to be viewed. Similarly there are other techniques like Inverse Fog/Scaling which involves scaling tasks to scale the objects in ways that would help navigate better. Modeled tasks like Possession and Rubberneck Navigation allow users to users to use standard 2D inputs to manipulate body as well as head movement.
There were 2 experiments conducted and user studies show that Speed-coupled Flying with Orbiting allows users to more efficiently navigate in certain environments.
A Survey of Design Issues in Spatial Input
The paper presents a survey of design issues for developing effective free-space three-dimensional (3D) user interfaces. The term spatial input refers to interfaces based upon free space 3D input technologies such as camera-based or magnetic trackers. The paper groups observations into two categories namely human perception and ergonomic concern.
In human perception it is important to understand the 3D space. There are six spatial interfaces with respect to 3D space perception. They are spatial references, relative gesture vs. absolute gesture, two-handed interaction, multisensory feedback, physical constraints and head tracking techniques.
In ergonomics it is important to understand the issues of multiple degrees-of freedom, positioning tasks vs. precise positioning tasks, dynamics and size of working volume of the user’s hands etc. It is important to understand how the mice and keyboard in combination can be used with free-space input devices.
Too many degrees of freedom to users it can be confusing and should be avoided in most cases. The correct use of transparency to facilitate target acquisition, ray casting, cone casting etc. , the correct use of camera mode all of these must be carefully looked at by the designer to ensure efficient user experience.
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