GVU Technical Report Number:
GIT-GVU-98-06
Title:
Exploratory Design of Animal Habitats Within an Immersive Virtual
Environment
Authors:
Doug A. Bowman
Jean Wineman
Larry F. Hodges
Abstract:
One of the first useful applications of virtual environments (VEs) was the
architectural walkthrough, in which users view buildings or other structures
in a natural, interactive manner. The obvious next step is to allow the user
to create or modify designs while immersed in the virtual world, but such
"immersive design" systems have not generally been successful, because of a
lack of constraints, the inability to perform precise input, the difficulty
of performing tasks while immersed, and the fact that designers generally
have not been trained to design in all three dimensions, especially in the
beginning stages of a project. We present an immersive design application,
aimed at university-level architecture students, which addresses these
issues. Users of the system are immersed within an existing zoo habitat, and
can make modifications and enhancements to the exhibit, using a set of
efficient and complementary interaction techniques for navigation, object
manipulation, and system control. A usability study has shown that because
the students are not creating a complete design, but rather making
constrained modifications to an existing one, interesting and unique designs
can be achieved in a short time.
Keywords:
Virtual environments, immersive design, immersive modeling, 3D interaction
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