From: owner-3dui@hitl.washington.edu on behalf of Doug Bowman
[bowman@vt.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2001 10:44 AM
To: 3dui List
Subject: RE: text/number input in VEs

Thanks for the pointer to Quikwriting - I wasn't aware of it.
(Also thanks to Lorenzo Pastrana, who pointed out the same
site.) I think that such a system might be able to work on
a pen & tablet setup, but it would still have to be large
in order to minimize tracking areas. You could also hold a
real PDA in your hand, but it would be difficult to place the
stylus in the correct position since you couldn't see the PDA
(assuming an HMD-based system).

The pinch keyboard that we did doesn't involve handwriting at
all. It uses pinch gloves to simulate a QWERTY keyboard, so
users can transfer their existing knowledge of the keyboard
layout. You pinch the finger that would normally type a letter
(e.g. left pinky finger for 'a') to the thumb on the same
hand. To change rows, you move your hands in and out (hands
are tracked). Visual feedback shows which letters can be typed
at any time based on the tracking info.

You can get more information on this project at:
http://www.cs.vt.edu/~bowman/3di/text_input.html
There are some papers and a video linked at the bottom of the
page.

--Doug

--
Doug A. Bowman, Ph.D. (540) 231-2058
Assistant Professor   (540) 231-6075 (fax)
Computer Science      bowman@vt.edu
Virginia Tech       www.cs.vt.edu/~bowman/




> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-3dui@hitl.washington.edu
> [mailto:owner-3dui@hitl.washington.edu]On Behalf Of Sébastien Kuntz
> Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2001 9:15 AM
> To: 3dui List
> Subject: Re: text/number input in VEs
>
>
> Hello!
>
> could you point me to information about the keyboards you're talking
> about?
>
> you could use the grafitti system used for palms, but Ken Perlin
> has something of lots interest on his web page. It's called
> quickwriting,
> and is actually used for pocket PCs, but I think this could be easily
> adapted to VEs.
>
> "Quikwriting is significantly faster and less stressful to use than
> Graffiti, and lets you write very quickly without ever picking your
> stylus up off the surface, although it has the disadvantage that you
> need to learn a special alphabet"
>
> http://mrl.nyu.edu/projects/quikwriting/
>
> what do you think of that?
>
> --
> Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere
> in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.
> -- Calvin