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CS
6724: 3D Interaction |
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Homework There will
be one homework assignment, worth 15% of the final grade. Students will
complete either Homework 1 or Homework 2, described below. Both homeworks
will be completed during the same timeframe. Homework
1 Assigned:
Aug. 29 Due:
Sept. 26 Description:
For this homework, students will work together to implement the benchmark
environments/tasks for the class project. This task is very important,
because the result will be the software foundation upon which all of the
class projects will be built! The domain
of visual analytics motivates the first scenario. Analysts in many domains
have to work with very large and heterogeneous datasets, and somehow
"make sense" of these datasets to tell a coherent "story"
about what happened or what is predicted to happen. For example, intelligence
analysts may have hundreds of email messages, phone records, profiles of
individuals, etc., which they must use to determine whether or not there is a
threat. Large, high-resolution displays may be useful to analysts to help them
visually organize their data. But little is known about the interaction
techniques that should be used to interact with these datasets on large,
high-resolution displays. In our
benchmark application, we will start with an unstructured set of approximately
1000 objects. Each object will be represented by an icon that shows its type
and a small label indicating its name. We will provide a very large 2D
workspace (the entire display) onto which users can place these objects.
Users must be allowed to select an individual object, place an individual
object anywhere in the 2D workspace, select multiple objects, group multiple
objects, and create links between individual objects and between groups of
objects. The system should also draw a boundary around objects that are
grouped and display a large label for each group. The
second scenario comes from the gaming domain. Many real-time strategy games,
such as Warcraft, are based on a large 2D map populated with troops,
buildings, geographical features, etc. Previous research here has shown the
benefits of playing such games on a large, high-resolution display, but
again, little work has been done on interaction techniques for gaming on such
displays. In our
scenario, we will use an open-source real-time strategy game called Invasion – Battle of Survival.
The benchmark application must display the game on our large, high-resolution
display, and allow basic mouse-based interaction allowing a user to play the
game. Supported tasks should include selecting individual or multiple items
or locations on the map, moving units or items to new locations on the map,
and changing action modes. Deliverables:
Code, documentation, and demonstrations for the 2 benchmark applications. The
two applications are now available! Here is documentation on the
input system and the real-time strategy game. Here is documentation on the "visual analytics"
application. Homework
2 Assigned:
Aug. 29 Due:
Sept. 26 Description:
For this homework, students are to work together to perform a literature
survey on the topic of interaction techniques for large displays, and write a short report on the
findings. This task is very important, because it provides the scholarly
background and ideas upon which all of the class projects will build. The goal
of a literature survey is to obtain an understanding of the range of research
that has been performed in a particular area and the limitations of the
existing research. To
perform your literature survey, first make sure you understand the scope of
the topic. Talk to Dr. Bowman if you need
help getting started. Make a list of some terminology related to the topic
that might serve as good search terms. Once you're ready to search, don't
start with Google! Start with more
specific search engines that are more likely to return relevant results. These
include the ACM digital library, IEEExplore, and Citeseer. Try several different
versions of search strings, and search both titles and abstracts if possible.
Browse the results looking for papers directly related to the topic. Once you
have identified 2-3 "core" papers and read them, you can broaden
your search in a couple of ways. You can look at the references of a core paper
and follow the most relevant ones (searching backward in time). You can also
search for other publications by the same author(s) on the same general topic
(searching forward in time). Finally, using some of the tools (esp. Citeseer) you can find out which
papers have referenced your core paper and look at those. Finally, you can do
a Google search to uncover anything
interesting (e.g. commercial products) that the other tools might have
missed. Once you
have identified all the papers/sites that relate to your topic, read all the
abstracts (at least). For those that are the most interesting or relevant,
read the entire paper. Then organize your papers into categories – these
categories will serve as the outline for your report. Finally, ask yourself,
"What important research questions remain in this area that have not yet
been adequately addressed?" Some of this will come from the "future
work" sections of the papers you read, but you will also need to think
deeply about the subject yourself. Deliverable:
A written report of 5-10 pages (not including the bibliography). The report
should have an introduction defining the topic and related areas, then
several sections summarizing the categories of existing research on the
topic, and should conclude with a section on important open research
questions in the area. As you
summarize the existing research, do not simply list papers or projects and
describe their content. Rather, you need to provide a readable summary of the
topic that shows how researchers have addressed the topic and how their
approaches and results are similar or different. Bring out the relationships
between different papers/projects. And show the limitations of the existing
research. Support your arguments with as many citations as you can, but do
not simply make the report a list of citations. Here are two short examples, one showing the style that I
want, and one demonstrating a poor, "laundry list" style. The
citations and bibliography may be formatted in any way as long as they are
consistent. Include as much bibliographic information as you can (including
page numbers, volume/issue numbers for journals, publishers, etc.) for each
reference. You may reference URLs if that is the only option, but most of
your references should be published articles. The final literature survey
report produced by the class is available here. |
