Virtual Environment Interaction Techniques

Virtual environments have shown considerable promise as a natural (and thus it is hoped more effective) form of human-computer interaction. In a virtual world you can use your eyes, ears, and hands much as you do in the real world: move your head to set your viewpoint, listen to sounds that have direction, reach out your hands to grab and manipulate virtual objects. Virtual worlds technologies (such as head-tracking and stereo, head-mounted displays) provide a better understanding of three-dimensional shapes and spaces through perceptual phenomena such as head-motion parallax, the kinetic depth effect, and stereopsis. Precise interaction, however, is difficult in a virtual world. Virtual environments suffer from a lack of haptic feedback (which helps us to control our interaction in the real world) and current alphanumeric input techniques for the virtual world (which we use for precise interaction in the computer world) are ineffective. We are unfamiliar with this new medium we work in; we do not fully understand how to immerse a user within an application. Before we can create virtual world solutions to real world problems we must learn how to interact with information and controls distributed about a user instead of concentrated in a window in front of him. We must identify natural forms of interaction and extend them in ways not possible in the real world.