Augustine Su's Publication & Presentation

S. Augustine Su and Richard Furuta

A Specification of 3D Manipulations in Virtual Environments

in ISMCR '94: Topical Workshop on Virtual Reality, Proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium on Measurement and Control in Robotics
Houston, Texas (Nov 30-Dec 3, 1994), NASA Conference Publication 10163, pp. 64-68.

To see the full paper (in gzipped postscript)

---

Abstract

Virtual Reality techniques have promised intuitive and effective user interfaces to virtual worlds. However, due to the absence of maturity of standard and tailorable software abstractions as seen in 2-D graphical user interface, current techniques for the interactions of 3-D objects and gestures are ad hoc and unnatural.

In this paper, we discuss the modeling of three basic ways of 3-D manipulation, in the context of a logical hand device and the Virtual Panel Architecture of our work. The logical hand device is a useful software abstraction representing hands in virtual environments. The Virtual Panel Architecture is the 3-D counterpart of the 2-D window systems. Both of the abstractions are intended to form the foundation for adaptable 3-D manipulation.

Within our software framework, the click-and-drag in 2-D graphical user interface can be gracefully replaced by a meaningful hold-and-move in virtual environments. With these tailorable abstraction tools, the semantics of natural and precise gestures can be rapidly prototyped.