User Aspects of Stereoscopic 3D Video Interaction.

The recent development of stereoscopic three dimensional (3D) display technologies has resulted in a proliferation of 3D video production and broadcasting, attracting a lot of research into capture, compression and delivery of stereoscopic content. However, little research has been dedicated to design practices of meaningful user interaction with stereoscopic 3D video content. Having this in mind, this thesis presents a series of studies in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) that analyse user aspects of stereoscopic 3D video interaction, propose technical solutions and give design guidelines for intuitive interaction with stereoscopic 3D video content. Three main user studies have been conducted to look into this research topic. The user requirement analysis in terms of interactive functionalities and interaction modality requirements showed strong demand for the task of object selection in 3D video interaction, that resulted in a follow-up study of user preferences in 3D selection using virtual-pointer and ray-casting metaphors. In addition, the immersive experience of stereoscopic 3D displays to the audience is caused by artificially stimulating binocular stereopsis in the human visual system. The binocular disparity between the left and right view is the key factor in creating the convincing impression of depth, distinguishing the stereoscopic 3D video from other types of video. Taking into consideration the imperfections of current disparity estimation algorithms, this thesis finally presents a study into the impact of disparity errors on users perception of depth and its implications to interaction tasks in 3D stereoscopic systems. A further investigation of pointing modalities in the context of stereoscopic 3D television (TV) was conducted, adopting the ISO 9241-9 standard for multi-directional tapping task and the Fitts law model. This experimental study compared and evaluated three pointing modalities: standard mouse-based interaction, virtual laser pointer implemented using Wiimote, and hand movement modality using Kinect. The results suggest that the virtual laser pointer modality is more advantageous than other modalities in terms of user performance and user comfort