From: Marc Bernatchez
<marc.bernatchez@polymtl.ca>
Date:
To: '3DUI' <3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu>
Cc: Doug Bowman <bowman@vt.edu>
Subject: Re: Is there any standard in VR?
I believe this is the document you are referring to:
http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/cache/papers/cs/15177/http:zSzzSzcs.ru.ac.zazSzho
meszSzg97rc001zSzpaperszSzusability-taxonomy.pdf/gabbard97taxonomy.pdf
The CiteSeer page for it:
http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/gabbard97taxonomy.html
I read this document a few weeks ago. It is very large and contains many
things, but it is more useful at giving a starting point for many different
area of VR/VE than going into specifics of one of them. It constitutes a
good starting point, but to really standardize VR/VE user interfaces, we
must push further ahead than that.
One other problem is the fact that VR hardware is still a problem too, after
all those years. It has a huge impact on all kinds of software issues we
currently have in the field. Let's do an other
parallel :-) For the
classical 2D desktop paradigm, it has started around the 70's at Xerox PARC
and the Stanford Research Laboratory (now SRI). But even if these early
prototypes of windows based metaphors were born, think of what would have
happened if the mouse would have took, say, twice as much time to develop
into a usable device. The first mouse concept actually appeared before the
window software concept, around 1964. In the early 80's, all companies were
starting selling personal computers (Commodore, Apple, Coleco,
Instrument, Tandy, Sinclair, ...). Check this web page
for a timeline:
http://oldcomputers.net/ (Nice memories popping back in my mind). It was the
new gold rush. All this furious competition took place for a few years (~7
years) before some of the contenders finally got out of fuel and left the
idea. A few stayed on place and we started seeing much faster (and focussed)
evolution of the computer PC afterward. It basically took 20 years from
the first mouse concpet to the first personal computer to use it with a
windows oriented operating system (Apple Lisa, June 1983).
That is the "filtering selection" I was referring to. The problem is
that
until we can have stable (and most importantly, recognized) VR hardware, it
is doubtful we can hope to see such things as what happened for the PC. The
VR hardware has to go through the same process as the PC did. Then, the same
process again has probably to be applied to software user interfaces for
VR/VE systems. Think of what benefits it could do just to have a standard
"VR glove" that finally has a 6DOF tracking system built-in. The
market
wants hassle-free plug&play solutions. Right now, every time a newcomer
wants to start doing VR, he is scratching is head wondering what hardware
and software to put together to do that "VR".
Doug, do you have URLs handy for the things you pointed out?
Thanks
==============================
Marc Bernatchez
Ph.D. candidate
Ecole Polytechnique de
marc.bernatchez@polymtl.ca
----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Bowman" <bowman@vt.edu>
To: "Jerry Isdale" <isdale@hrl.com>;
"'3DUI'" <3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu>
Cc: "Marc Bernatchez" <marc.bernatchez@polymtl.ca>;
"Deborah Hix"
<hix@cs.vt.edu>; "Joe Gabbard" <jgabbard@vt.edu>
Sent:
Subject: Re: Is there any standard in VR?
Debby Hix and Joe Gabbard are
still here at Virginia Tech, working on
usability engineering for VEs. The guidelines work you mention was
Joe's MS thesis, but I can't find it online right now (perhaps Joe can
point you to it).
I will also point out guidelines work by Kulwinder Kaur in the
(mostly for desktop VEs), and by myself (see e.g. my chapter in the
Handbook of Virtual Environments). Finally, a good source of 3D UI
guidelines are the course notes from the SIGGRAPH 2000 and 2001 courses
by Joe LaViola, Ivan Poupyrev, Ernst Kruijff, and myself.
--Doug
On
Some excellent ground work for
interaction was the work of Joe Gabbard
and Debbie Hix on Usability of Virtual Environments, circa 1996-99.
There was a volumnious handbook of guidelines they generated for a
variety of situations/devices/tasks (ONR grant).
Alas my links for that work are no longer functional although
cite-seer still contains some references to the published papers
although these links are also unresponsive today.
.
Doug Bowman - they were last seen in your vacinity (VT). Any
pointers?
Are you out there Joe? Debbie? Are your papers still on the web?
--
Doug Bowman (540) 231-2058 (voice)
Assistant Professor (540) 231-6075 (fax)
Computer Science bowman@vt.edu (email)
Virginia Tech http://people.cs.vt.edu/~bowman/