From: owner-3dui@hitl.washington.edu on behalf of Ernst Kruijff
[kruijff@fossi.uni-weimar.de]
Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2000 2:20 PM
To: Robert W. Lindeman
Cc: 3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu
Subject: Re: system control - techniques and guidelines

Hi Rob (et al),


> Wie geht's? I'm looking forward to the tutorial at VR2K!

Great, thanks for asking! And, I am also looking forward to VR2k - still,
system control is bugging me a bit at the moment. 

> I have some comments about Question 1 (as I hunker down in the snows of
> Washington, DC, unable to move from my home...slowly...going...crazy...
> got...to...keep...control...)

Minus 19 degrees Celcius here in the east =:-)


> > ----------------Question 1
> > 
> > First of all, I would like to ask if someone knows about "unusual" system
> > control techniques used in virtual environments. I have been
> > looking around through publications and projects and have come to a
> > preliminary (rough) categorization of system control techniques and would
> > like to see if it really works... You can find the categorization at:
> > http://www.uni-weimar.de/~kruijff/systemcontrol.gif
> > Any comment is appreciated! Useful publications or project links which
> > might be applicable (next to the "obvious" ones I have from Mine, Conner,
> > and so on) are therefor also very welcome! 
> 
> I'm not sure if you already looked at it, but I developed some
> taxonomy stuff for my thesis where I struggled with the same
> questions (I think you have the video tape of some of it, right?)
> Anyway, my dissertation (and other, shorter papers) can be found at:
> 
>   http://www.seas.gwu.edu/~gogo/gogopubs.html
> 
> One of the difficulties I encountered was separating the action from
> the interface device/method. For instance, Gestures are used to both
> "grab-and-drop" objects directly, as well as to access menus using
> a virtual laser-pointer.

Of course I know your work, I read it - still, thanks for pointing to it
again. The question of seperating actions from device
characteristics is I think very important and also a topic which I will
try to handle (for a small amount of actions of course) in my own dis.
Still, this is very hard, as you will also know. I am also not sure which
is the best approach to "solve" this problem, at the moment. 


> A second issue has to do with locomotion vs. manipulation. If we need
> to both locomote in the environment, as well as manipulate objects,
> how can we best design or combine techniques that will allow us to do
> both effectively?
> 
> I know locomotion techniques and manipulation techniques have
> traditionally been addressed separately, but I have been thinking for
> the past year or so about more holistic approaches.
> (Dirk Gently any one? ;-)


What do you did in your dis. is potentially very interesting I think. The
three axes you use (direct versus indirect manipulation, discreet versus
continuous actions, and dof's) are logical to me , still the application
of such a categorization into the development process is hard, I think.
(and, more axes might be needed).  
However, this does not make the categorization less applicable - what you
said about the "locomotion and manipulation" might also be applied. To
address techniques in synergy has been addressed by Doug, btw - he called
it crosstasking (I think it at least is very similar). 

I will think about your categorization and see how it can work on mine of
system control - let's see, it might bring new insides (yours is at least 
also focussed at system control.) ! 
To categorize system control is pretty hard ...... 
It is pretty much that which can not really be put into the other
universal interaction tasks... How was it again? The old apple
waistbin, not? :-) 

Thanks,

   -Ernst  





                        ernst kruijff (M.A.)
             teaching and research scientist
____________________________________________
.................bauhaus-universitaet weimar
.....................faculty of architecture
chair caad and architecture [prof.dr.donath]
............................d - 99421 weimar

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.........email: kruijff@archit.uni-weimar.de
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............................guest researcher
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