Navigation Interface Tutorial

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Navigation Interfaces for Virtual Reality and Gaming: Theory and Practice

First ver­sion held at IEEE VR 2017, Sunday, March 19, 1:30pm — 5:00pm, updated vari­ants of the tuto­r­ial will be pre­sented at

ACM Chi 2018 (slides) and IEEE VR 2018.

At The Spatial Cognition 2018 con­fer­ence we will present a new tuto­r­ial on Spatial Navigation Interfaces for Immersive Environments focus­ing more on the spa­tial cog­ni­tion aspects.

Presenters: Ernst Kruijff & Bernhard Riecke

Description of courses offered at IEEE VR and ACM CHI

In this course, we will take a detailed look at var­i­ous breeds of spa­tial nav­i­ga­tion inter­faces that allow for loco­mo­tion in dig­i­tal 3D envi­ron­ments such as games, vir­tual envi­ron­ments or even the explo­ration of abstract data sets. We will closely look into the basics of nav­i­ga­tion, unrav­el­ing the psy­chophysics (includ­ing wayfind­ing) and actual nav­i­ga­tion (travel) aspects. The the­o­ret­i­cal foun­da­tions form the basis for the prac­ti­cal skill set we will develop, by pro­vid­ing an in-depth dis­cus­sion of nav­i­ga­tion devices and tech­niques, and a step-by-step dis­cus­sion of mul­ti­ple real-world case stud­ies. Doing so, we will cover the full range of nav­i­ga­tion tech­niques from hand­held to full-body, highly engag­ing and partly uncon­ven­tional meth­ods and tackle spa­tial nav­i­ga­tion with hands-on-experience and tips for design and val­i­da­tion of novel inter­faces. In par­tic­u­lar, we will be look­ing at afford­able setups, rapid pro­to­typ­ing meth­ods and ways to “trick” out users to enable a real­is­tic feel­ing of self-motion in the explored envi­ron­ments. As such, the course unites the theory and prac­tice of spa­tial nav­i­ga­tion, serv­ing as entry point to under­stand and improve upon cur­rently exist­ing meth­ods for the appli­ca­tion domain at hand.

Description of tutorial at Spatial Cognition 2018

Computer­-mediated stim­uli and envi­ron­ments such as Virtual Reality are becom­ing increas­ingly afford­able, prac­ti­ca­ble, and wide­spread in spa­tial cog­ni­tion research. In this tuto­r­ial we will pro­vide an overview of the rapidly evolv­ing land­scape of nav­i­ga­tion inter­faces and par­a­digms used in medi­ated envi­ron­ments, from Virtual Reality (the main focus) to aug­mented and mixed real­ity, games, tele­operation, tele­presence, tele­ro­bot­ics, and design review. We will dis­cuss dif­fer­ent tax­onomies of nav­i­ga­tion par­a­digms, and take a detailed look at var­i­ous breeds of spa­tial nav­i­ga­tion inter­faces and par­a­digm that allow for loco­mo­tion in immer­sive 3D envi­ron­ments such as vir­tual envi­ron­ments, games, design review, and tele­presence appli­ca­tions. We will dis­cuss rel­e­vant dif­fer­ences between nav­i­gat­ing real vs. medi­ated envi­ron­ments, and how this can yield spe­cific chal­lenges includ­ing con­cur­rent ref­er­ence frame con­flicts and adverse side-­effects such as dis­ori­en­ta­tion and motion sick­ness. As motion sick­ness is a wide­spread chal­lenge in medi­ated envi­ron­ments, we will dis­cuss under­ly­ing causes and poten­tial solu­tions. These foun­da­tions form the basis for the prac­ti­cal skillset we will develop, by pro­vid­ing an in­-depth dis­cus­sion of nav­i­ga­tion devices and tech­niques includ­ing data from exper­i­ments, and a step-­by-­step dis­cus­sion of mul­ti­ple real­-world case stud­ies. Doing so, we will cover the full range of nav­i­ga­tion tech­niques from hand­held to full­-body, highly engag­ing and partly uncon­ven­tional meth­ods and tackle spa­tial nav­i­ga­tion with hands­-on­ expe­ri­ence and tips for design and val­i­da­tion of novel inter­faces. In par­tic­u­lar, we will be look­ing at afford­able setups and ways to “trick” users to enable a com­pelling feel­ing of pres­ence and self­-motion in the explored envi­ron­ments. As such, the course unites the theory and prac­tice of spa­tial nav­i­ga­tion in medi­ated envi­ron­ments. We will con­clude with a dis­cus­sion of open issues and poten­tial future research directions.

Kruijff, E., & Riecke, B. E. (2017). Navigation Interfaces for Virtual Reality and Gaming: Theory and Practice. Course, 433–434. https://doi.org/10.1109/VR.2017.7892362 (Download)
Kruijff, E., & Riecke, B. E. (2018). Navigation Interfaces for Virtual Reality and Gaming: Theory and Practice. 2 pages (half-day course). (Download)
Kruijff, E., & Riecke, B. E. (2018). Navigation Interfaces for Virtual Reality and Gaming: Theory and Practice. CHI ’18 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 4 pages (half-day course). https://doi.org/10.1145/3170427.3170643 (Download)
Riecke, B. E., LaViola, J. J., Jr., & Kruijff, E. (2018). 3D User Interfaces for Virtual Reality and Games: 3D Selection, Manipulation, and Spatial Navigation. ACM SIGGRAPH 2018 Courses, 13:1–13:94. https://doi.org/10.1145/3214834.3214869
Riecke, B. E., & Kruijff, E. (2018). Spatial Navigation Interfaces for Immersive Environments. 3 pages (half-day tutorial).
Riecke, B. E. (2017, May 6). Navigation Interfaces for Gaming and Immersive Environments [Tutorial]. CVR, Vancouver, BC, Canada. https://youtu.be/w7irxz1udQA

Slides

Introduction

Part 1: Principles of Navigation

Part 2: Navigation Devices and Techniques

Part 3: Design, Develop, Validate

Part 4: Case Studies

Here’s a video of Bernhard pre­sent­ing on some of the course mate­r­ial, from the CVR con­fer­ence 2017 in Vancouver

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