Interaction Techniques for Immersive Virtual Environments: 
Design, Evaluation, and Application

Doug A. Bowman
Graphics, Visualization, and Usability Center
College of Computing
Georgia Institute of Technology

Human-Computer Interaction in three dimensions is not well-understood,
and there are few 3D-only applications in common use.  Moreover,
the problems with 3D interaction are magnified in immersive virtual
environment (VE) applications.  Immersive VEs can generally
be characterized by a lack of access to traditional input devices,
such as keyboards and mice, low display resolution (at least in head-
mounted display systems), inaccurate position and orientation
tracking, and high end-to-end latency.  These characteristics cause
the design of user interfaces (UIs) and interaction techniques (ITs)
for immersive VEs to be extremely difficult.

Despite these difficulties, we maintain that there are applications
for which immersive VEs are desirable.  These applications are those
which will benefit from an enhanced sense of immersion, or "presence,"
within a 3D space, those which make use of a user's proprioceptive
senses, and those which naturally require 3D spatial input.  If this
is the case, then special attention needs to be paid to the design
and implementation of ITs for these applications, given the limitations
described above.

In this talk, I will describe current work on the design, evaluation,
and application of interaction techniques for common tasks in immersive
VEs.  These tasks include travel, selection, manipulation, and
system control.  I will motivate the use of "testbed evaluation,"
which considers not only the interaction technique, but also outside
factors which may influence user performance.  Finally, I will present
a complex VE application which has high usability due to the
implementation of appropriate interaction techniques.