From: owner-3dui@hitl.washington.edu on behalf of Jeff Pierce
[jpierce@cs.cmu.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2001 4:28 PM
To: bowman@vt.edu; 3dui List
Cc: Chris Rhoton
Subject: Re: text/number input in VEs

At 08:36 AM 9/26/01, Doug Bowman wrote:
>Greetings everyone!
>
> [...]
>
>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?

Depends on your metric for importance.  =)  I don't think text/number entry
falls into the "VR would catch on if only X happened" category (although it
might be an interesting discussion for what exactly X covers), but I agree
that there are tasks that require text or numerical input.

The hard part is coming up with a rationalization for not using voice.
Voice is intuitively more appealing for many tasks that would otherwise
require text/number entry (specifying file names, locations, commands,
etc.), but whether voice recognition is up to the task yet is an open
question (any been doing studies on voice recognition in VR?).  Do you have
a set of compelling tasks that lend themselves more to text/number entry
than voice?

>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?

Mark also had his "number dials" in ISAAC / CHIMP.  No text input, but fun
for numeric input.

Jeff