From: owner-3dui@hitl.washington.edu on behalf of Yanqing Wang
[yanqing@sfu.ca]
Sent: Wednesday, January 26, 2000 2:25 AM
To: 3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu
Subject: Re: system control - techniques and guidelines

Hi,
I just join this list and have a few comments to add.



>SPEED
>
>-Place system control at the right place


I read a paper in The Proceedings of Medicine Meets Virtual Reality
(MMVR)99,
implementing a 2D window superimposed on a table surface in a 3D VR.The
2D window is hidden when a user perform 3D manipulation tasks. The 2D
window is actuated when the user taps on the table so he can issue a
command. They did not do a user test, but it's very interesting. Too bad
I don't have the paper reference.

>-Possibly constrain DOF's
>   / Old guideline, basically coming from guidelines applicable to
>   selection

Yes, especially the haptic constraints can help a lot in speed.
The paper I'll present at chi2000 will address this issue --"The role of
contextual haptic and visual constraints on object manipulatin in virtual
environments".


>-Adapt size of system control elements to technical characteristics of
> the environment


Definately.For a 3D docking task, humans achieve better performance
when the cursor and controller have the same size. That is,
if your cursor has a size (shape) of your mouse, your interaction
is much better! We reported this in our chi99 paper "relative size
matters".


>
>-Make use of strengths of input and output devices for affordance
> / match system control to characteristics of the devices you use - this
> might be the most obvious in case of props.


I am not sure which "characteristices" you refer to. Anyway, I feel that
the physical or form factors of input device are very important,
yet, under-studied.

Have a good VR2K

Yan