From: owner-3dui@hitl.washington.edu on behalf of Pablo Figueroa
[pfiguero@cs.ualberta.ca]
Sent: Friday, September 28, 2001 5:18 PM
To: Doug Bowman
Cc: 3dui List; Chris Rhoton
Subject: Re: text/number input in VEs

Hi Doug,

I don't remember good references about this topic, but I think it is
necessary to have good I/O in VR applications for any type of information,
including text and numbers. If we don't, the environment won't be
complete, so a user will have to switch between applications to complete a
task (not nice at all... ;->)

By the way, I wonder how you explore the solution space. One option is to
compare between different hardware environments, as I think you're doing,
but this always leave doubts about better environments or better
interaction techniques, for example one based on speech recognition. How
can we find the best option for a particular task? I think it's possible
to find a certain hardware/sw configuration that maximizes
performance/usability, but maybe such an installation is too expensive in
a particular situation. Other option is to classify environments by a
certain metric (one option is price, despite I don't like it...) and to
choose the best one in a particular category. In this case, is the pinch
glove comparable to a speech recognition engine, for this particular task?
Is there a set of common performance/usability parameters that can be used
in the comparison?

Best Regards,

On Wed, 26 Sep 2001, Doug Bowman wrote:

> Greetings everyone!
> 
> It's been awfully quiet on the 3DUI list lately. I wanted to
> remind everyone that the list is here and still active. There
> are lots of you out there - consider sending a message to the
> list updating us on your current research, asking a question,
> or raising a topic for discussion!
> 
> Along those lines, let me suggest a discussion topic. I've
> been working on methods for entering text and numeric data
> in immersive VEs where no standard keyboard is available. You
> may have seen the Pinch Keyboard technique we presented at
> HCI International 2001. I'm firmly convinced that such techniques
> are necessary and useful in many VE applications, but others
> apparently don't see the need. What do you think? Is text/
> number entry an important task for immersive VEs? Why or why not?
> 
> On a related note, I'm looking for references in this area. I
> know about Ivan's virtual notepad, and several other "virtual
> keyboards" (not used in VEs, but could be applied there). 
> Has anyone used a chord keyboard, soft keyboard, or speech for 
> text/number entry in an immersive VE? Any usability or performance
> results?
> 
> We're currently doing a study comparing the pinch keyboard with
> a Twiddler 2 chord keyboard and a soft keyboard using the pen &
> tablet technique.
> 
> Thanks,
> 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/
> 
> 
> 

-- 
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Pablo Figueroa              pfiguero@cs.ualberta.ca
PhD Student                 http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~pfiguero
University of Alberta

Relax ... God is in charge  
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