From bowman@cc.gatech.edu Fri May 22 00:52:29 1998 Received: from burdell.cc.gatech.edu (root@burdell.cc.gatech.edu [130.207.3.207]) by lennon.cc.gatech.edu (8.8.4/8.6.9) with ESMTP id AAA08936 for ; Fri, 22 May 1998 00:52:27 -0400 (EDT) Received: from wheaten.hitl.washington.edu ([128.95.73.60]) by burdell.cc.gatech.edu (8.8.4/8.6.9) with ESMTP id AAA24626 for ; Fri, 22 May 1998 00:52:09 -0400 (EDT) Received: from burdell.cc.gatech.edu (burdell.cc.gatech.edu [130.207.3.207]) by wheaten.hitl.washington.edu (8.8.8/8.6.12) with ESMTP id VAA00525 for <3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu>; Thu, 21 May 1998 21:51:31 -0700 (PDT) Received: from lennon.cc.gatech.edu (bowman@lennon.cc.gatech.edu [130.207.9.20]) by burdell.cc.gatech.edu (8.8.4/8.6.9) with ESMTP id AAA24503 for <3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu>; Fri, 22 May 1998 00:50:51 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from bowman@localhost) by lennon.cc.gatech.edu (8.8.4/8.6.9) id AAA08852 for 3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu; Fri, 22 May 1998 00:50:50 -0400 (EDT) From: bowman@cc.gatech.edu (Doug Bowman) Message-Id: <199805220450.AAA08852@lennon.cc.gatech.edu> Subject: Re: New topic - adapted 2D interfaces for 3D To: 3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu (3D UI List) Date: Fri, 22 May 1998 00:50:50 -0400 (EDT) In-Reply-To: <199805220224.TAA04911@wheaten.hitl.washington.edu> from "Jeff Pierce" at May 21, 98 09:59:56 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Content-Type: text Status: RO Jeff replied to my question about 2D in 3D interfaces: (now we know why the list was so quiet - Jeff was out of town :-) ). > Ok, 2D interfaces for 3D. I think this depends on how and why they're > used. I've seen a number of immersive 3D interfaces that adopt 2D > interaction techniques as a failure of design: the designer either didn't > even think about what a 3D interaction technique would look like, or didn't > invest enough time and just fell back on what had been done before. Agreed. > The obvious advantage is that you're leveraging off what (most) people > already know. We've button-slider-pulldown menu'd them to death for years. > Heck, even CNN uses pulldown menus on TV now to indicate a change in topic. Yes, and I think this can be a bigger advantage than people realize. I *love* to play with cool new 3D interaction techniques, but I wish I had a nickel for every time I had to explain them in detail to a user, and often they still didn't get it. (Of course, someone will say the techniques I refer to must not have been intuitive enough) But with some 2D interface elements on a tablet, I just have to say, "press that button", or "drag that icon". > The disadvantage is that you're using a interaction technique from one > medium (2D desktop) in a different medium (3D, either immersive, CAVE, > desktop, whatever). In certain cases this can work: I think if you have a I think this is most people's first reaction, and I think it has some merit. Things designed specifically for a medium usually work better than something adapted from somewhere else (witness MS Office 98 for Mac versus Office 4.2.1 for Mac - a blatant Windows port). However, I don't think that's the whole story here. The question I would ask would be, "Why use a fully 3D technique if you don't have to?" People aren't used to manipulating more than about 2 degrees of freedom at once. You can constrain your 3D interaction, but how is that different from 2D? There are plenty of mundane tasks that will have to be done in a complex VE application which don't require 3D and which would probably suffer from a 3D implementation. I think voice input will probably solve a lot of these issues, but others will require 2D interfaces that are well- integrated with the 3D VE. Thoughts? Comments? Flames? :) P.S. Everyone congratulate Matt on receiving his Ph.D. diploma at U.Va. over last weekend... -- Doug Bowman, Ph.D. Candidate College of Computing, GVU Center, Georgia Tech Room 388 CRB, (404) 894-5104 bowman@cc.gatech.edu http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/Phd/Doug.Bowman/