Enhanced 3D interaction with augmented visual information

Abstract

As 3D graphics environment becomes the standards for most computer systems, it is natural to seek a 3D input device for manipulating an object in a 3D virtual world. Unlike 2D interface, however, 3D interface creates perceptual mismatches including depth perception problem. The objective of our research is to enhance the depth perception and 3D interaction by providing additional information based on the pictorial depth cues and interaction cues. In this paper, we investigated how to incorporate such cues. We designed two kinds of additional viewport that are to be placed on the top of the interaction window. One is a basic additional view with a different FOV, and the other is a compound view made up with 9 small sub-views with varying viewing direction. We also implemented two behaviors of the augmented view with respect to user interaction: Interactive Resizing and Holding-Z. Through a set of user performance tests, we have concluded that the basic additional view with Interactive Resizing and the additional compound view made statistically significant improvement on the performance of 3D interaction with a 3D input device. Keywords: Virtual Environment, Human Computer Interaction. © 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin/Heidelberg.