From mconway@microsoft.com Mon May 11 10:42:27 1998 Received: from burdell.cc.gatech.edu (root@burdell.cc.gatech.edu [130.207.3.207]) by lennon.cc.gatech.edu (8.8.4/8.6.9) with ESMTP id KAA21721 for ; Mon, 11 May 1998 10:42:24 -0400 (EDT) Received: from wheaten.hitl.washington.edu (4wBiVWmhw6EkGuhJ0wgNs/KREfeHWQ+I@[128.95.73.60]) by burdell.cc.gatech.edu (8.8.4/8.6.9) with ESMTP id KAA26966 for ; Mon, 11 May 1998 10:42:23 -0400 (EDT) Received: from mail1-b.microsoft.com (mail1-b.microsoft.com [131.107.3.125]) by wheaten.hitl.washington.edu (8.8.8/8.6.12) with ESMTP id HAA07430 for <3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu>; Mon, 11 May 1998 07:42:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: by INET-IMC-01 with Internet Mail Service (5.5.2166.0) id ; Mon, 11 May 1998 07:41:47 -0700 Message-ID: <4FD6422BE942D111908D00805F3158DF05B266B2@red-msg-52.dns.microsoft.com> From: Matt Conway To: "'Ivan Poupyrev'" , 3D UI list <3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu> Subject: RE: HMDs, CAVEs, COVEs, monitors, oh my! Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 07:41:43 -0700 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2166.0) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-2022-jp" Status: RO > -----Original Message----- > From: Ivan Poupyrev [mailto:poup@mic.atr.co.jp] > Sent: Monday, May 11, 1998 12:24 AM > To: 3D UI list > Subject: Re: HMDs, CAVEs, COVEs, monitors, oh my! > > > > >Matt Conway and Jeff Pierce wrote: > > >In terms of cost and sheer numbers, I believe that most 3D UIs will > > >appear > > >on mundane setups, those with a humble monitor plus mouse. > These will > > >outnumber caves, coves, reactive workbenches, head mounts, > interactive > > >holograms (cool MIT stuff!), or even Very Large Screens for the > > >forseeable future. > > > > I'll buy that we probably won't see 6 DOF input devices on > the desktop any > > time soon, but it'd be nice to at least get a 2nd input > device for our > > other hand. > > I am wondering which interfaces and applications can be called 3D and > which can not. When I am playing Doom on PC with a keyboard, is it 3D > interface or not? If I develop some extremely cunning interaction > techniques for flying through 3D space using only keyboard, would it > be a 3D interaction techniques or not? Excellent question, Ivan. The important thing (to me, anyway) isn't that we have a "correct" answer to this but one that is acceptable to the group. We should at least all agree on what we mean when we say 3D UI. Here's my vote: When I think of 3D UI, I think of *any* interaction technique (keyboard, mouse, voice, trackers, glove, datanose, etc.) that allows me to navigate or interact with a 3D virtual world. The alternate definition that Ivan alludes to is that a 3D interface is one that in itself is spatial in nature. If that is the proposal, I would turn around the question of whether Doom is a 3D interface: imagine you had a "spatial/3D interface" that allowed the user to gesture in space in order to navigate around a 2D app like a spreadsheet. Would that be a 3D interface? In my opionion, I think it is important to keep focused on the important problems: 3D worlds are too hard to navigate and 3D objects are too hard to manipulate. We shouldn't shut out an interface style because "the interface isn't 3D." This is a long-winded way of saying, "yes, Doom is a 3D interface." Of course, if there are dissenting opinions, please chime in (and begin by explaining how the Object Associations work isn't a 3D interface) *smirk*. If not, then what kind of > techniques it would be? I believe that although desktop PCs are not > inherently good for 3D UI, they are important from simple economics > perspective: there are millions and millions of monitors installed > on the desks all over the world. What should we do to make 3D user > interfaces convenient enough so that people use them on simple PCs > without adding specialized input devices? Is it possible at all? That > would be an interesting search. I believe it is possible -- and you give the existence proof yourself: Doom. Quake. I'm dead serious. Does that prove that desktop is good for everything 3D? Of course not, but it proves that you can do some things, even compelling things. It can also do seductive things that are wrong. See also Denny Proffitt's work. Sometimes ya gotta have a "real VR rig". > In relation to 6DOF input devices for desktops, one of the > interesting approaches is camera-based tracking. On the last IEEE > Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition (this April) > there were some impressive results. For example there was a guy > from Australia, who was showing real-time gaze direction > tracking using > PC camera. He told me that he can get 1 mm accuracy in tracking, > taking that the camera is close enough to the face, his video demo > was really good. Mitsubishi was showing their artificial retina > chip, an imagecapturing chip that can 1) extract edges 2) run > correleations 3) do it bloody fast 4) cost $5 a piece. Using 2 > cameras with this chip they were able to track head orientation. > In real time and it was good. Well, at least on thier video tape. > yes. This is going to become huge. Maybe even bigger than huge. Cameras can be made cheap as dirt and there are other good things you can do with them (video conferencing, taking stills). Given that, it isn't unreasonable to speculate that cameras could become the next "soundblaster-like" technology -- something that everyone gets on a new computer by default. I still believe that "props based" interfaces are important for a lot of reasons, though I fear that only gamers and niche market users will buy funky devices and wear funky headgear. Matt