Building user-controlled 3D models and animations for inherently-3D construction tasks: Which tool, which representation?

Abstract

In this paper, we first define a class of problems that we have dubbed inherently-3D, which we believe should lend themselves to solutions that include user-controlled 3D models and animations. We next give a comparative discussion of two tools that we used to create presentations: Cosmo™Worlds and Flash. The presentations included text, pictures, and usercontrolled 3D models or animations. We evaluated the two tools along two dimensions: 1) how well the tools support presentation development and 2) the effectiveness of the resultant presentations. From the first evaluation, we concluded that Flash in its current form was the more complete development environment. For a developer to integrate VRML into cohesive presentations required a more comprehensive development environment than is currently available with Cosmo™Worlds. From our second evaluation, based on our usability study, we have made two conclusions. First, our users were quite successful in completing the inherently-3D construction task, regardless of which presentation (Shockwave or VRML) they saw. Second, we found that enhancing the VRML models and including multiple perspectives in Shockwave animations were equally effective at reducing errors as compared to a more primitive VRML. Based on our results we believe that for tasks of the 3D-complexity that we used, Flash is the clear choice. Flash was easier to use to develop the presentations and the presentation was as effective as the model that we built with Cosmo™Worlds and Java. Finally, we postulate a relationship between inherently-3D task complexity and the relative effectiveness of the VRML presentation