From: Ben Watson [watsonb@cs.ualberta.ca]
Sent: Wednesday, September 15, 1999 6:22 PM
To: g 3D user interfaces
Subject: Re: comparing VE displays

Hi all,

I agree with Doug here, it would be nice to pose our advice
in practitioner's terms.  E.g.: if you need X in your app,
use a display like Y or Z.

One factor (X) I was pondering was "outside-in" (exocentric)
vs. "inside-out" (egocentric).  I would contend that certain
displays are best suited to one or the other of these.  Of
course, it's not always clear which of ego- or exocentric is
best for an app.

Thoughts?

Ben.


[Charset iso-8859-1 unsupported, filtering to ASCII...]
> This is definitely the type of thing that I'm going after.
> However, as you well know, you can't always describe something
> in terms of just its component parts (that just ruins my whole
> dissertation, doesn't it? :-) ). In other words, an HMD
> just has a different "feel" to it than a CAVE which is not
> solely due to the differences in resolution, brightness, FOV,
> etc. Even a workbench in vertical orientation is qualitatively
> much different than one in horizontal orientation.
> 
> I guess what I'm wondering is if we can determine some principles
> that apply directly to the common types of displays rather than
> using a level of abstraction - these types of principles are more
> easily applied by the practitioner. For example, "Use a CAVE if
> your task requires a high level of subjective immersion" is better
> from the practitioner point of view than, "Subjective immersion
> increases with increased field of view and decreased encumberance."
> 
> Thoughts, anyone?
> 
> > Seems like the best place to start is in decomposing "displays" into their
> > critical characteristics.
> >
> > o   resolution
> > o   field-of-view
> > o   head coupling
> > o   etc......
> >
> > These must then be tied to performance measures that can be generalized to
> > tasks (applications to use your term). You would then have a reasonable
> > framework for experimentation.
> 
> --
> Doug A. Bowman, Ph.D.          (540) 231-7537
> Assistant Professor             bowman@vt.edu
> Computer Science        www.cs.vt.edu/~bowman/
> Virginia Tech
> 
> 


-- 
Benjamin Watson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Computing Science
615 General Services Building
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2H1
tel: +1 780 492 9918
lab: +1 780 492 7418
fax: +1 780 492 1071
email: benjamin.watson@ualberta.ca
URL: http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~watsonb