Designing 3D Interfaces Examples of 3D interfaces Pros and cons of 3D interfaces Overview of 3D software and hardware Four key design issues: system performance, movement, presence, health & safety
Dec 28, 2015
Designing 3D Interfaces
Examples of 3D interfacesPros and cons of 3D interfaces
Overview of 3D software and hardwareFour key design issues:
system performance, movement, presence, health & safety
What is a 3D interface?
Uses 3D graphics, possibly combined with specialised hardware, to give depth or perspective to the display of information
Utility:Extended GUIs
Realism:Immersive Interfaces
VisualisationVirtual
Environments
Degree of ‘utility versus realism’
Visualisation
Adding focus and context to 2D interfaces
3D visualisation of scientific data
Virtual Environments
Simulation Games
Pros and cons of 3D Pros:
create a sense of presence realistic simulation of physical space and objects more display space through focus + context
Cons: additional dimension to manipulate and control hard to map onto 2D displays and devices occlusion difficulty of remembering the locations of information requires greater hardware performance
3D interface software
Graphics libraries Objects (polygons and meshes), lighting, textures,
animation, collisions, physics (e.g., deformations), special effects (e.g., fog), cameras
With scripting User interaction, object behaviours, time-based actions
Sound Used for ‘spot effects’, soundtrack, and speech Spatialisation
Supporting tools Modelling and animation 2D art work - textures
Specialised 3D interface hardware
Hardware characteristics
Output Field of view Resolution Frame rate Stereo or mono Extent of exclusion of physical world (Locally) Shared or individual Degree of encumberance Force Feedback
More hardware characteristics
Input Degrees of freedom of movement sensing Range Accuracy Jitter Physical stability (for public use)
Key Design Issues
System performance Movement Presence Health and safety
System performance
Real-time performance is the often the most vital factor for 3D interfaces Maintain high frame-rate Rapid interaction with minimal latency Download size for online
Movement Up to six DOF required But, the input device may
support fewer make frequent movements direct less frequent require special
actions - additional mouse buttons, keys or special vehicles
but watch out for loss of parallelism - e.g., rotation as a single action
Also need to design manipulations – point, select, drag, rotate, resize, carry etc
Presence
A mental state where participant has the sense of being in the location specified by the displays - “being there”
A fundamental goal of VR? Measuring presence
subjective presence behavioural presence
Factors that affect presence
Immersion Mode of navigation Self-body image External disruptions Inconsistencies between the user’s mental
model of the world and its actual behavior Boredom and amount of activity
Health and Safety Possible effects
sickness postural instability psycho-motor coordination
Four factors the VR system the virtual environment the user the task
Health & Safety Guidelines
maintain frame rate > 20 hz, 8-15 hz may be especially bad
keep lag as low as possible don’t use HMD without other present inform users and encourage small head
movements avoid awkward postures for sustained
periods