Interacting with virtual environments using augmented virtual tools
Henry A. Sowizral · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1994
Users of virtual environments currently have few good options for controlling or interacting with their environment from within. Existing VR interaction techniques, including menus, postures, gestures, and wands, all suffer from a variety of problems, not the least of which is the unnatural, almost forced, mapping that exists between the input act and its corresponding function. This paper describes a new technique for controlling and interacting with virtual environments. The techniques superimposes an object in the real world with an augmented representation of that object in the virtual environment. Such blending of a physical object with its augmented virtual representation results in a surprising natural interaction metaphor.