Mesh-Grab and Arcball-3D: Ray-based 6-DOF Object Manipulation

ABSTRACT

Manipulation of 3D objects is important for collaboration and education, where a presenter might wish to manipulate a 3D object to present it to an audience. We present Mesh-Grab and Arcball-3D; two ray-based techniques for manipulating remote 3D objects using a handheld wand and present the results of a formal evaluation session where we compared them against the state-of-the-art in direct interaction techniques. In a 6-DOF docking task, our proposed techniques performed slightly slower than Scaled HOMER but overall, participants showed preference towards Arcball-3D and complained about fatigue and awkward arm postures on Scaled HOMER. In addition to the users' preference, as ray-based techniques do not require full-range rotation, we conclude that they are a viable alternative to direct interaction.

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Index Terms

• Human-centered computing

  • Human computer interaction (HCI)