User Interface

Chairs: Nicholas Polys, Virginia Tech & Pablo Figueroa, Universidad de los Andes

Overview

In Industry, Entertainment, and Academia, the durability and portability of Web3D content is being tested in new frontiers of computing and interface paradigms. From immersive systems to game-stations to hand-helds, affordable hardware and devices are enabling new metaphors for 3D, ergonomically valid interfaces. In order to tap the rich potential for networked virtual spaces, content designers need standards that provide better capabilities to access, manage, and use a wide range of input devices, as well as more expressive power to describe novel interaction techniques.

Past and current standards maintain the goal for interactive 3D media that is network-aware and platform-independent. Although the desktop is still implicit in many applications, it is an open challenge to standardize robust support for a wide range of platforms. This group seeks to improve the specification’s support of devices beyond the mouse and techniques beyond the raycast. Through a set of language components, designers should have the capability to remap or port their applications between devices and platforms. This enabling functionality will lay the foundation for new 3D Interface expression and innovation.

Working Group Goals

The main goal of the Web3D Consortium User Interface Working Group is to design and propose ways to support general UI functionality in X3D content. We want X3D developers to be able to:
  • Implement novel and established 3D interaction techniques in a standard language.  Authors should be able to describe techniques in terms of the proposed extension (Eg Go-Go, Homer, World-In-Miniature)
  • Replicate current functionality (i.e. TouchSensor) with the proposed extension.
  • Work with Compositing Component to enable things like right-click menus on the image plane, and for  visual feedback in the image or background planes
What we want to accomplish is to push the specification far enough so authors can write their own custom techniques for navigation, selection, manipulation, and visualization and that their techniques can be adapted depending on the I.O device or platform used and the user’s preferences.

At this initial stage, the group’s goal is not targeting standardizing interaction techniques themselves (too much research to be done to know what is advantageous when), writing a node for every device under the sun (never could be complete), or building a Swing-like UI framework (though that should be possible). Nevertheless we plan to consider performance issues and networking capabilities in our proposal. We would like our proposal to have the minimum performance penalties in future implementations, so the extended X3D language could be a valid option for the creation of new systems, similar to what it could be achieved with other interpreted or declarative languages. For the same reasons we would like to allow X3D-based applications to be able to receive and send network events, required in any multiuser application. Although we consider networking and interface issues orthogonal, we plan to keep in mind networking as a requirement in our solution.

Deliverables

The component specification drafts and recommendations of this group will be presented to the X3D Spec group along with the Amendment 2 process and following updates of the standard.

In addition, the group will provide a set of application use-cases and design rationale documents, which motivate the work and establish the metrics for success.

We plan to consider the following issues:

  • Integration of input and output devices, different from the ones in common desktop environments
  • Methods for selecting and manipulating objects in the scene
  • Integration to current components
  • Study of performance issues in our proposal
  • Integration of input and output events from other applications over the network

Current participants

Nicholas Polys, Virginia Tech
Pablo Figueroa, PhD. Assistant Professor, Universidad de los Andes. Bogotá, Colombia
Alan Hudson, Yumetech
Denis Gracanin, PhD (Assistant Professor, Virginia Tech)
Aaron Bergstrom, NDSU
Dick Puk, PhD. Intelligraphics
Don Brutzman, PhD. Professor NPS
Johannes Behr, PhD
Herbert Stocker. BitManagement
Chris Thorne
Raimund Daschelt, PhD. T.U. Dresden

How to join an X3D Working Group

Any Consortium Member can join a Working Group. We offer student, professional, academic and company level memberships.

Consortium members can simply go to the Consortium Member Login area of the website to sign-up to join this work group

Member Login


Username:

Password:

Not yet a member?

X3D Development