Reseach alerts
Jennifer Bruer · interactions · 2000
i n g 3 -D D e p t h V i s u a l i z a t i o nThe dramatic increase in the performance capabilities of contemporary computing hardware has enabled the development of various three-dimensional (3-D) user interface techniques for business, entertainment, and scientific applications 1 that were impossible just a few years ago.However, a significant challenge facing 3-D interface designers is to develop effective techniques to depict objects in 3-D space on a physical medium that is inherently two-dimensional (2-D): a flat computer screen.It is especially challenging to effectively depict 3-D depth relationships, such as relative position and size, among objects presented on a computer screen.To this end, interface designers use various secondary depth cues, including perspective, elevation, relative size, texture, shading and shadow, motion, and reference frames (see Kelsey [1993] for a thorough discussion of primary and secondary depth cues) to make 2-D objects appear 3-D.We conducted two experiments to investigate the relative utility of moving objects that cast shadows on different background scenes so that the viewer could reposition and resize objects in space.For example, in Figure 1, the task was to reposition one of eight spheres in order to form a cube in a room background scene.Using a spaceball input device, human subjects "flew" the sphere located near the middle of the figure to form a cube by repositioning the misplaced sphere in the lower, rear, left-hand corner.The performance of each task was measured in accuracy and 9 i n t e r a c t i o n s . . .j a n u a r y + f e b r u a r y 2 0 0 0