While advances in computing have empowered users to design and interact with objects in virtual three-dimensional space, little effort has been made to improve or facilitate interaction with the viewpoint. Once we begin to consider this problem, we find that it effectively spans a huge problem domain with many special cases. It touches on many of the fundamental difficulties in 3D interaction: being inside an object vs. being outside, how close is the viewpoint to the object, what is the user looking at and/or is interested in, egocentric vs. exocentric thinking, parallel vs. perspective viewing projections, multiscale and level-of-detail issues, what kind of data is being examined (abstract, incomplete, photoreal, engineering, CAD, entertainment, medical, simulation, etc.), and what is the user task (authoring, inspecting, etc.). Additional technical issues include correct handling of the clipping planes and floating-point precision problems. To help understand and address some of these issues, we have an ongoing research program to improve the state-of-the-art in 3D navigation.
Much progress has been made and we continue to actively work in this area. Also, many of our designs have been incorporated into shipping Autodesk products, thanks to our Research Transfer team.
James McCrae, Michael Glueck, Tovi Grossman, Azam Khan & Karan Singh. (2010).
Exploring the Design Space of Multiscale 3D Orientation
AVI 2010 Conference Proceedings:
Advanced Visual Interfaces Conference.
pp. 81 - 88.
Michael Glueck, Sean Anderson & Azam Khan. (2010).
DeskCube: using Physical Zones to Select and Control Combinations of 3D Navigation Operations
SimAUD 2010 Conference Proceedings:
Symposium on Simulation for Architecture and Urban Design.
pp. 41-44.
Invited Paper
Lode Vanacken, Tovi Grossman & Karin Coninx. (2009).
Multimodal selection techniques for dense and occluded 3D virtual environments
International Journal of Human-Computer Studies.
March 2009, 67(3).
pp. 237-255.
Special Issue on Current Trends in 3D User Interface Research
James McCrae, Igor Mordatch, Michael Glueck & Azam Khan. (2009).
Multiscale 3D Navigation
I3D 2009 Conference Proceedings:
ACM Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics.
pp. 7-14.
Michael Glueck, Keenan Crane, Sean Anderson, Andres Rutnik & Azam Khan. (2009).
Multiscale 3D Reference Visualization
I3D 2009 Conference Proceedings:
ACM Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics.
pp. 225-232.
George Fitzmaurice, Justin Matejka, Igor Mordatch, Azam Khan & Gord Kurtenbach. (2008).
Safe 3D Navigation
I3D 2008 Conference Proceedings:
ACM Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics.
pp. 7-15.
Azam Khan, Igor Mordatch, George Fitzmaurice, Justin Matejka & Gord Kurtenbach. (2008).
ViewCube: A 3D Orientation Indicator and Controller
I3D 2008 Conference Proceedings:
ACM Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics.
pp. 17-25.
Nicolas Burtnyk, Azam Khan, George Fitzmaurice & Gord Kurtenbach. (2006).
ShowMotion: Camera Motion based 3D Design Review
I3D 2006 Conference Proceedings:
ACM Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics.
pp. 167-174.
Azam Khan, Ben Komalo, Jos Stam, George Fitzmaurice & Gord Kurtenbach. (2005).
HoverCam: Interactive 3D Navigation for Proximal Object Inspection
I3D 2005 Conference Proceedings:
ACM Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics.
pp. 73-80.
Michael Tsang, George Fitzmaurice, Gord Kurtenbach, Azam Khan & Bill Buxton. (2003).
Boom Chameleon
ACM Transactions on Graphics.
July 2003, 22(3).
pp. 698.
Invited Short Paper
Michael Tsang, George Fitzmaurice, Gord Kurtenbach & Azam Khan. (2003).
Game-like Navigation and Responsiveness in Non-game Applications
Communications of the ACM.
July 2003, 46(7).
pp. 56-61.
Special Issue on Gaming Technology
Michael Tsang, George Fitzmaurice, Gord Kurtenbach, Azam Khan & Bill Buxton. (2002).
Boom Chameleon: Simultaneous capture of 3D viewpoint, voice and gesture annotations on a spatially-aware display
UIST 2002 Conference Proceedings:
ACM Symposium on User Interface Software & Technology.
pp. 111-120.
Nicolas Burtnyk, Azam Khan, George Fitzmaurice, Ravin Balakrishnan & Gord Kurtenbach. (2002).
StyleCam: Interactive Stylized 3D Navigation using Integrated Spatial & Temporal Controls
UIST 2002 Conference Proceedings:
ACM Symposium on User Interface Software & Technology.
pp. 101-110.
Ravin Balakrishnan & Gord Kurtenbach. (1999).
Exploring bimanual camera control and object manipulation in 3D graphics interfaces
CHI 1999 Conference Proceedings:
ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.
pp. 56-62.
Ravin Balakrishnan, Thomas Baudel, Gord Kurtenbach & George Fitzmaurice. (1997).
The Rockin'Mouse: Integral 3D manipulation on a plane
CHI 1997 Conference Proceedings:
ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.
pp. 311-318.
Sean Anderson
Ben Komalo
Igor Mordatch
Andres Rutnik
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