Interfaces for Cloning in Immersive Virtual Environments

Three-dimensional objects in many application domains, such as architecture and construction, can be extremely complex and can consist of a large number of components. However, many of these complex objects also contain a great deal of repetition. Therefore, cloning techniques, which generate multiple spatially distributed copies of an object to form a repeated pattern, can be used to model these objects more efficiently. Such techniques are important and useful in desktop three-dimensional modeling systems, but we are not aware of any cloning techniques designed for immersive virtual environments (VEs). In this paper, we present an initial effort toward the design and development of such interfaces. We define the design space of the cloning task, and present five novel VE interfaces for cloning, then articulate the design rationale. We have also performed a usability study intended to elicit subjective responses with regard to affordance, feedback, attention, perceived usefulness, ease of use, and ease of learning in these interfaces. The study resulted in four major conclusions. First, slider widgets are better suited for discrete than for continuous numeric input. Second, the attentional requirements of the interface increase with increased degrees-of-freedom associated with widgets. Third, users prefer constrained widget movement, although more degrees-of-freedom allow more efficient parameter setting. Finally, appropriate feedback can reduce the cognitive load. The lessons we learned will influence our continuing design of cloning techniques, and these techniques will ultimately be applied to VE applications for design, construction, and prototyping

Designing Explicit Numeric Input Interfaces for Immersive Virtual Environments

User interfaces involving explicit control of numeric values in immersive virtual environments have not been well studied. In the context of designing three-dimensional interaction techniques for the creation of multiple objects, called cloning, we have developed and tested a dynamic slider interface (D-Slider) and a virtual numeric keypad (VKey). Our cloning interface requires precise number input because it allows users to place objects at any location in the environment with a precision of 1/10 unit. The design of the interface focuses on feedback, constraints, and expressiveness. Comparative usability studies have shown that the newly designed user interfaces were easy to use, effective, and had a good quality of interaction. We describe a working prototype of our cloning interface, the iterative design process for D-Slider and V-Key, and lessons learned. Our interfaces can be re-used for any virtual environment interaction tasks requiring explicit numeric input

Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Cloning Techniques for Architectural Virtual Environments

We made the first attempt towards building effective domain-specific interaction techniques for a cloning task. Five interaction techniques were designed and evaluated considering different aspects of domain requirements and human limitations. We demonstrated their effectiveness of designed techniques in two usability studies. The results suggested that no single technique is best for all task conditions. Techniques designed for cloning improved the domain task performance profoundly. The work suggests a further direction: passing domain knowledge to the design process to increase the usefulness of VEs

Towards Rapid Generation and Visualisation of Large 3D Urban Landscapes for Mobile Device Navigation

In this paper a procedural 3D modelling solution for mobile devices is presented based on scripting algorithms allowing for both the automatic and also semi-automatic creation of photorealistic quality virtual urban content. The combination of aerial images, GIS data, 2D ground maps and terrestrial photographs as input data coupled with a user-friendly customized interface permits the automatic and interactive generation of large-scale, accurate, georeferenced and fully-textured 3D virtual city content, content that can be specially optimized for use with mobile devices but also with navigational tasks in mind. Furthermore, a user-centred mobile virtual reality (VR) visualisation and interaction tool operating on PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) for pedestrian navigation is also discussed. Via this engine, the import and display of various navigational file formats (2D and 3D) is supported, including a comprehensive front-end user-friendly graphical user interface providing immersive virtual 3D navigation

Through the Looking Glass: The Use of Lenses as an Interface Tool for Augmented Reality

Stephen N. Spencer The University of Washington Program Chairs Alan Chalmers Hock Soon Seah Publisher ACM Press New York, NY, US

Modeling On and Above a Stereoscopic Multitouch Display

International audienceWe present a semi-immersive environment for conceptual design where virtual mockups are obtained from gestures we aim to get closer to the way people conceive, create and manipulate three-dimensional shapes. We developed on-and-above-the-surface interaction techniques based on asymmetric bimanual interaction for creating and editing 3D models in a stereoscopic environment. Our approach combines hand and nger tracking in the space on and above a multitouch surface. This combination brings forth an alternative design environment where users can seamlessly switch between interacting on the surface or in the space above it to leverage the bene t of both interaction spaces

Analysis domain model for shared virtual environments

The field of shared virtual environments, which also encompasses online games and social 3D environments, has a system landscape consisting of multiple solutions that share great functional overlap. However, there is little system interoperability between the different solutions. A shared virtual environment has an associated problem domain that is highly complex raising difficult challenges to the development process, starting with the architectural design of the underlying system. This paper has two main contributions. The first contribution is a broad domain analysis of shared virtual environments, which enables developers to have a better understanding of the whole rather than the part(s). The second contribution is a reference domain model for discussing and describing solutions - the Analysis Domain Model

Procedural content creation in VR

3D content creation for virtual worlds is a difficult task, requiring specialized tools based on a WIMP interface for modelling, composition and animation. Natural interaction systems for modelling in augmented or virtual reality are currently being developed and studied, making use of pens, handheld controllers, voice commands, tracked hand gestures like pinching, tapping and dragging mid-air, etc. We propose a content creation approach for virtual reality, placing a focus on making procedural content generation (PCG) intuitive and generalizable. Our approach is to start with a library of 3D assets, with which the user populates an initially empty world by placing and replicating objects individually. The user can then construct procedural rules to automate this process on the fly, creating abstract entities that behave like a block of objects while still being treated and manipulated like other singleton objects. To this end, we design a rule system for procedural content generation adequate for virtual reality, including nested object replication, relative placement and spacing, and randomized selection. We then design and prototype a natural interaction model for virtual reality suited to this rule system, based on two-handed object manipulation, controller input and user voice commands. A prototype of this interaction model is built, and finally, a former user evaluation is conducted to assess its viability and identify avenues for improvement and future work

Immersive Serious Games for Learning Physics

Gaming in Virtual Reality has been growing at a rapid pace in the last decade with the proliferation of affordable head mounted displays (HMDs) and development frameworks. There has been a lot of research regarding user’s spatial mapping, selection and orientation in VR, but so far not a lot of work has been done to measure performance on widgets used for other actions. In this document I aim to analyze two widgets, World in Miniature(WIM) and an isometric 2D display, in a common task in gaming: aiming and shooting at a long distance target. We measured performance from a quantitative perspective by measuring average aiming time and error rate between the widgets, and gathered user feedback to understand which widget the users preferred based on usability and perceived performance. The measured performance showed a significant difference in the error rate between the isometric 2D display and the baseline, but not with the WIM. The qualitative analysis showed that users were confident about their enjoyment of the WIM but more polarized about their opinion on the isometric 2D display. The results can be considered as a starting point to a broader discussion on spatial interaction. In particular we suggest that the importance of operation and manipulation ability of a widget might be more important than the information displayed on the widget itself

Bootstrapping Robotic Skill Learning With Intuitive Teleoperation: Initial Feasibility Study

Robotic skill learning has been increasingly studied but the demonstration collections are more challenging compared to collecting images/videos in computer vision and texts in natural language processing. This paper presents a skill learning paradigm by using intuitive teleoperation devices to generate high-quality human demonstrations efficiently for robotic skill learning in a data-driven manner. By using a reliable teleoperation interface, the da Vinci Research Kit (dVRK) master, a system called dVRK-Simulator-for-Demonstration (dS4D) is proposed in this paper. Various manipulation tasks show the system's effectiveness and advantages in efficiency compared to other interfaces. Using the collected data for policy learning has been investigated, which verifies the initial feasibility. We believe the proposed paradigm can facilitate robot learning driven by high-quality demonstrations and efficiency while generating them.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, accepted by ISER202