From: Marc Bernatchez
<marc.bernatchez@polymtl.ca>
Date:
To: '3DUI' <3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Is there any standard in VR?
Thank you all who took the time to share their views about my question
regarding standards applied to VR/VE.
I guess we can summarize by saying there is basically nothing yet.
VRML (soon X3D) is a standard 3D format useful to communicate various 3D
scenes and package it in a file. Still, it does not apply to the kind of
standard that was mainly referred to, that is, standard user interface
interaction techniques in general.
Worldtoolkit and such commercial toolkits are in between OpenGL and the kind
of standards we are referring to. They make it easier to code a 3D
environment simulation in terms of 3D objects and scene graph management.
Still, they are too low level to provide a standard UI framework that VR
application developers can use to create consistent user interface, that
share a common look and feel for the end-users.
Chad Wingrave bring very interesting remarks and I
feel the same regarding
his initial remark. "everyone builds their
own". As long as this situation
persists, we will not see major improvements.
Jerry Isdale added the HLA / DIS standards to the list. These are network
standards for VisSim applications which were initially put up by military
needs. I have worked with these a bit while I was at CAE Inc. (flight
simulation) but I'm not sure they adapt well to more general VR/VE
simulations. These standards use a pretty military-oriented (I.e.
battle-field simulation oriented) vocabulary. Still, it may represents
a
good starting point to address the network portion of the VE/VR systems.
Mark Young and Ivan Poupyrev pointed out that it may be too early to try to
standardize VE/VR user interfaces. I am more with the line of thinking of
Sandy Ressler. I understand (and greatly respect) Mark and Ivan point of
view. Granted, there is no real VE/VE market yet. Granted, a standard is
usually put up front to unify the way many commercial instances of a
technology can interface together. That been said, sometimes an early
standard effort can help the emergence of commercial use of a technology. We
are currently the best placed to have a clear vision of what is available
and what can be done to put some order in the VR UI arena.
There is currently "fog" in this field impeding a real commercial
interest
in developing professional user interface for the 3D market. There is not
enough knowledge about the current interaction techniques and 3D UI
paradigms. A "filter selection" will probably have to be performed on
the
many interaction techniques so that only the few best remains and develops
into standards (See "Immersive VR for Scientific Visualisation, A progress
report",
is that this filtering action has to be performed by the end-users. We are
stuck in a vicious circle.
I like to make a parallel with natural selection. If you look at evolution
of various life forms on earth, it indeed follow the
accepted view that
standards (i.e. successful life forms in this case) are selected by a
lengthy process of trial and error, only keeping the most adapted to their
environment. Human, by their actions are changing these rules quite
drastically. In a very narrow period, we are changing the environment so
much that valid life forms are vanishing from the planet. Are we imposing
new standards too early? Maybe. One thing comes out of
this thought, we can
change things much faster than what it normally takes natural selection to
operate. It is in that respect that I believe we are not forced to wait for
that market to appear before trying to standardize things in our field.
In the paper "Pioneers and Settlers - Methods Used in Succesful User
Interface Design" by S. K. Card at Xerox Palo Alto Research center at the
time, he refers to two kinds of inventions:
- Demand-pull (waiting for a market to show interest in something)
- Technology-push (trying to offer something new to the market and
create a demand for it)
I.e. we can either adopt a passive or proactive attitude regarding VE/VR UI
standardization.
Your views are always welcome.
Regards,
==============================
Marc Bernatchez
Ph.D. candidate
Ecole Polytechnique de
marc.bernatchez@polymtl.ca