Virtual Reality. A new user interface paradigm for industrial applications

Current state-of-the-art graphics workstations allow us to create images in less than 100ms which are almost photorealistic. The development of new input devices, interaction techniques and interaction metaphors which can exploit the power of these workstations is, however, in its infancy. Virtual reality makes use of these capabilities in order to give the user the sensation of being part of an environment in which they are able to manipulate virtual objects directly. But, in our opinion, the successful use of virtual reality in industrial applications depends critically upon the quality of interaction which can be achieved between this new technology and the users "within" it. If this match is not achieved then the technology cannot hope to realise its full potential. This paper presents a classification for levels of interaction for 2D and 3D graphics in order to show how far the development of 3D interaction has progressed. It then describes sime short-comings in the current techno logy which will need to be addressed in the future in order to make interactions within a virtual environment more intuitive to the user as well as appropriate to the user's application. A 3D interaction toolkit named GIVEN is presented. GIVEN implements basic concepts for virtual environment interactions such as a gesture dialogue language, input device independence, object oriented behaviour and a toolkit approach to 3D interactions