Navigating a 3D Scene by Waving Your Arm
Apress eBooks · 2007
In this chapter, I explain how to navigate through a Java 3D world containing a checkerboard floor, a stormy background, a giant humanoid, and assorted ground cover, all mostly borrowed from the example in Chapter 7. The novelty here is that the navigation is achieved by the user moving and rotating his left arm; no keyboard or mouse manipulation is required. This “magic” is made possible by the user wearing a wrist strap containing three colored bands (blue, yellow, and red). Pictures of the strap are generated using the JMFCapture class from Chapter 9; a basic form of pattern recognition then finds the largest visible colored band on the strap. This information is converted into navigational commands for moving the camera around the world.