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Interaction styles in tools for developing virtual environments

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Abstract

This article discusses and compares interaction styles in development tools for virtual environments (VE). The comparison relies on a qualitative empirical study of two development processes where a command language and a direct manipulation based tool were used to develop the same virtual environment application. The command language tool proved very flexible and facilitated an even distribution of effort and progress over time, but debugging and identification of errors was very difficult. Contrasting this, the direct manipulation tool enabled faster implementation of a first prototype but did not facilitate a shorter implementation process as a whole. On the basis of these findings, the strength and weaknesses of direct manipulation for developing virtual environment applications are explored further through a comparison with a successful direct manipulation tool for developing interactive multimedia applications. The comparisons are used to identify and emphasize key requirements for virtual environment development tool interface design.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the development team: Mike H. Hougaard, Nikolaj Kolbe and Flemming N. Larsen. We are also grateful to VR-MediaLab at Aalborg University for granting us access to virtual reality installations and development tools. Figure 2 left (Five-sided VR-CUBE, Chalmers University) appears courtesy of Barco/TAN, used with permission.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

    Jesper Kjeldskov & Jan Stage

Authors
  1. Jesper Kjeldskov
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  2. Jan Stage
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jesper Kjeldskov.

Appendix: details of the milestones

Appendix: details of the milestones

  1. 1.

    Setting up workstation. This milestone is reached when the development tool and corresponding utilities are installed and configured correctly on the developer’s workstation and a pre-developed demonstration application for the tool can be executed successfully.

  2. 2.

    Setting up the Cave. This milestone is reached when the Cave has been set up to successfully execute the pre-developed demonstration application.

  3. 3.

    Creating a simple visualization. This milestone is reached when the developer can visualize a single cube by means of his own application.

  4. 4.

    Setting up light. This milestone is reached when the cube can be correctly lit by a single light source.

  5. 5.

    Creating the maze. This milestone is reached when the application contains a maze as specified in the task description. All cubes must be visualised with the correct colours and lighting but without use of textures.

  6. 6.

    Simple navigation. This milestone is reached when the maze is visualized from a moveable point of view functioning as an avatar that can be navigated by means of key presses on the keyboard.

  7. 7.

    Collision detection. This milestone is reached when the application is capable of detecting when the avatar collides with the walls of the maze and the exit door.

  8. 8.

    Collision handling. This milestone is reached when the application is capable of preventing the avatar from passing through the walls of the maze and ends the game when the avatar reaches the exit.

  9. 9.

    Setting up 3D input device. This milestone is reached when the application can read and interpret data from the 3D input device.

  10. 10.

    Navigation using 3D input device. This milestone is reached when the avatar can be navigated using the 3D input device.

  11. 11.

    Setting up motion tracking. This milestone is reached when the application can read and interpret data from the motion tracker.

  12. 12.

    Viewpoint using motion tracking. This milestone is reached when the viewpoint of the avatar can be controlled using the motion tracker.

  13. 13.

    Textures. This milestone is met when the all cubes in the maze are correctly visualized with textures.

  14. 14.

    Calibration. This milestone is met when the application has been calibrated so that the height of each cube in the maze match the height of physical walls of the Cave, and when the two applications have been calibrated to appear consistently with respect to visualization and user interaction.

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Kjeldskov, J., Stage, J. Interaction styles in tools for developing virtual environments. Virtual Reality 12, 137–150 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-008-0091-0

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