Navigation and locomotion in virtual worlds via flight into hand-held miniatures

This paper describes the use of a World-in-Miniature (WIM) as a navigation and locomotion device in immersive virtual envi ronments. The WIM is a hand-held miniature graphical represent tion of the virtual environment, similar to a map cube. When th user moves an object in the WIM, the object simultaneously move in the surrounding virtual environment. When the user moves a iconic representation of himself, he moves (flies) in the virtua environment. Flying the user in the full scale virtual world is confusing, because the user’s focus of attention is in the miniature, n in the full scale virtual world. We present the novel technique o flying the user into the miniature, providing perceptual and cogn tive constancy when updating the viewpoint.