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Avatar Navigation in Cobalt
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I am wondering about how the Avatar might be navigated on an interactive whiteboard or interactive surface in general. Touching the surface is basically the equivalent of a left mouse click event on most IWB hardware .... I am tempted to think about the Avatar navigation using buttons (like in the KAT demo code) but it seems there could be other more intuitive ways to move the avatar on an interactive surface by touching the surface in the location the user is wanting the avatar to move?
Any thoughts or navigation observations? .. for reference here is one of our old demo videos showing navigation & manipulation on IWB hardware http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVFsxev-2sk Seems like with Cobalt there could be some re-thinking of navigation methods regarding the interactive surface work we are doing. Rich === |
Re: Avatar Navigation in Cobalt
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Hi Rich,
At one point double-clicking on the ground zoomed you to that point. It got to be really annoying because of the sensitivity of the double click. If you dig around in the code you should find it. -Peter On Mar 7, 2008, at 2:57 PM, Rich White wrote: I am wondering about how the Avatar might be navigated on an interactive whiteboard or interactive surface in general. Touching the surface is basically the equivalent of a left mouse click event on most IWB hardware .... I am tempted to think about the Avatar navigation using buttons (like in the KAT demo code) but it seems there could be other more intuitive ways to move the avatar on an interactive surface by touching the surface in the location the user is wanting the avatar to move? |
Re: Avatar Navigation in Cobalt
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In reply to this post by RichWhite
Some people like that form of navigation, others don't. It seems to work in smaller spaces where the space is open and free from obstacles.
Navigating large outside spaces is a pain to do in this manner. So, I suspect optimal navigation methods depend on the construction of the environment and the purpose of moving the avatar. If a rethinking is to be done, I suspect we should consider asking and answering the question "Why does one wish to move the avatar at this time?" I'd prefer buttons that say:
Cheers, Darius On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 12:57 PM, Rich White <[hidden email]> wrote: I am wondering about how the Avatar might be navigated on an interactive whiteboard or interactive surface in general. Touching the surface is basically the equivalent of a left mouse click event on most IWB hardware .... I am tempted to think about the Avatar navigation using buttons (like in the KAT demo code) but it seems there could be other more intuitive ways to move the avatar on an interactive surface by touching the surface in the location the user is wanting the avatar to move? |
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Hi-- For what it's worth, I've found a Wii Remote useful for demos, just contriving particular keyboard or mouse gestures to be triggered by it, to which Croquet responds (perhaps after some programming on my part). There are a few Wii Remote event-mapping utilities floating around on the net for various host platforms. -C |
Re: Avatar Navigation in Cobalt
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In reply to this post by Darius Clarke
Rich's question brings up the bigger issue of navigation in 3D space.
In any 3D environment, there is a learning curve to the navigation. From Second Life to Quake to Super Mario Galaxy, navigation within desktop virtual environments remains a pain, is inexact, and requires a certain dexterity that gamers take for granted but causes my mother to walk away from the computer in disgust. I don't necessarily think we're going to solve this problem with Cobalt. At least not in the short-term. But I do think that one approach to making navigation somewhat easier is by providing many options for navigation, and making it easy to select among the options. You've got folks who like to navigate with the keyboard WoW style. Great. Let's make that possible. How about folks like Rich's students who are using a smartboard? What makes the most sense for them? Let's integrate that. I tend to think the Wii remote is the best VE navigation and interaction device that is currently available for the money. How about a Wii remote mode? And then there are a lot of folks who still rock the MS Sidewinder joystick they use for their flight sim and swear that it's "teh 1337," so let's integrate that too. But one thing that I think is not intuitive and is very difficult to master is using the mouse to navigate the 3D space. Seriously. Why should I be navigating with the same device that I use to interact in the environment? You can get away with this when you're using something like a Wii remote that affords pointing, moving, and has multiple buttons. But not with a mouse. It's clunky and inelegant.< br> There's my 2 cents. -Matt |
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Hello all,
Firstly, may I apologize for being a bit of a lurker here. I have been excited by Croquet since it first appeared and since then I've been following its development in the background, slowly learning Smalltalk in random fractions of spare time. In order to learn Croquet I am writing a little polyhedra construction & exploration space (growing trees, making polyhedra, folding & unfolding polyhedra). Anyway, to the point, is there a preferred way in Croquet to perform spatial queries like nearest neighbours and inside-bounding-box ? I see TOctree, & TBox may be involved in this, but I can't see how to use them. |
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On Sat, 2008-03-08 at 15:00 +1100, matthew chadwick wrote:
> Hello all, > > Firstly, may I apologize for being a bit of a lurker here. I have been > excited by Croquet since it first appeared and since then I've been > following its development in the background, slowly learning Smalltalk > in random fractions of spare time. In order to learn Croquet I am > writing a little polyhedra construction & exploration space (growing > trees, making polyhedra, folding & unfolding polyhedra). > > Anyway, to the point, is there a preferred way in Croquet to perform > spatial queries like nearest neighbours and inside-bounding-box ? > > I see TOctree, & TBox may be involved in this, but I can't see how to > use them. What would be really nice is a list of software packages that one needs to acquire to actually develop a world and the objects in it. Windows and Linux. Proprietary and Open Source. Maybe the list members would care to share what they prefer? That would help us graphically challenged members to make intelligent choices selecting packages. Ric -- ================================================ My father, Victor Moore (Vic) used to say: "There are two Great Sins in the world... ..the Sin of Ignorance, and the Sin of Stupidity. Only the former may be overcome." R.I.P. Dad. Linux user# 44256 Sign up at: http://counter.li.org/ http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/oar http://www.wayward4now.net <---down4now too ================================================ |
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On 3/8/08, Ric Moore <[hidden email]> wrote:
> What would be really nice is a list of software packages that one needs > to acquire to actually develop a world and the objects in it. Windows > and Linux. Proprietary and Open Source. Maybe the list members would > care to share what they prefer? That would help us graphically > challenged members to make intelligent choices selecting packages. Ric You might start with these: http://croquetconsortium.org/index.php/Content_Resources http://croquetconsortium.org/index.php/External_3D_Tools |
Re: Avatar Navigation in Cobalt
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In reply to this post by Matthew Schmidt-2
Whoever is choosing should check the HCI and VR literature for
navigation. There are literally decades of anecdotal and user-study results on this subject. Mark Mine's dissertation will have references going back from 1997, though his body-centric technique won't apply (http://www.cs.unc.edu/~mine/mine_dissertation.html). Bill Buxton has had a lot to say on the subject. VR and HCI conference proceedings are probably the best place to start. At 09:07 PM 3/7/2008, you wrote: >Rich's question brings up the bigger issue of navigation in 3D space. > >In any 3D environment, there is a learning curve to the navigation. > From Second Life to Quake to Super Mario Galaxy, navigation within >desktop virtual environments remains a pain, is inexact, and >requires a certain dexterity that gamers take for granted but causes >my mother to walk away from the computer in disgust. I don't >necessarily think we're going to solve this problem with Cobalt. At >least not in the short-term. But I do think that one approach to >making navigation somewhat easier is by providing many options for >navigation, and making it easy to select among the options. > >You've got folks who like to navigate with the keyboard WoW style. >Great. Let's make that possible. How about folks like Rich's >students who are using a smartboard? What makes the most sense for >them? Let's integrate that. I tend to think the Wii remote is the >best VE navigation and interaction device that is currently >available for the money. How about a Wii remote mode? And then there >are a lot of folks who still rock the MS Sidewinder joystick they >use for their flight sim and swear that it's "teh 1337," so let's >integrate that too. But one thing that I think is not intuitive and >is very difficult to master is using the mouse to navigate the 3D >space. Seriously. Why should I be navigating with the same device >that I use to interact in the environment? You can get away with >this when you're using something like a Wii remote that affords >pointing, moving, and has multiple buttons. But not with a mouse. >It's clunky and inelegant.< br> >There's my 2 cents. > >-Matt > --- Russell M. Taylor II, Ph.D. [hidden email] CB #3175, Sitterson Hall www.cs.unc.edu/~taylorr University of North Carolina, Voice: (919) 962-1701 Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3175 FAX: (919) 962-1799 |
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