From: Jeff Pierce [jpierce@cs.cmu.edu]
Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2000 2:47 PM
To: bowman@vt.edu; 3dui List
Subject: RE: need references

At 02:30 PM 5/18/00, Doug Bowman wrote:
>When you say you use pinch gloves for most of the new
>techniques, can you give me some examples? Is the use of
>the pinch gloves relatively simplistic in all these cases
>(e.g. just using a tracker on the back for hand position/
>orientation and one or two pinch contacts for events) or
>are there some more novel things you've done?

In most cases using pinch gloves is fairly straightforward.  The biggest
challenge we've found is in integrating multiple interaction techniques.
Assigning a different technique to each finger is problematic, because
users regard the assignments as arbitrary.  We've instead done work on
moding what pinches do based on the orientation of the user's hand.  For
example, using only a thumb-forefinger pinch, but using it to grab space,
create a voodoo doll, or shrink the world based on how the user is holding
their hold.  Basically pinch plus gesture.

The other thing we've found is that you often need to carefully consider
how to choreograph pinches.  For example, consider using a pinch to open a
3D menu that allows you to load objects.  To make this one handed what
you'd really like to do is pinch to show the menu and pinch to release, but
you'd also like to pinch to select an object (so that the user is left
"holding" it).  A better solution might be to pinch and release to show the
menu, and hide it without a selection if the user's hand leaves the menu
volume.

Jeff