Comparison of a two-handed interface to a wand interface and a mouse interface for fundamental 3D tasks

Abstract

This paper describes a two-handed interface that enables intuitive interaction with 3D multimedia environments. Two user studies demonstrated the effectiveness of the two-handed interface in fundamental 3D object manipulation and viewpoint manipulation tasks. Trained participants docked and constructed 3D objects 4.5-4.7 times as fast as a standard mouse interface and 1.3-2.5 times as fast as a standard one-handed wand interface. 19 of 20 participants preferred the two-handed interface over the mouse and wand interfaces. 16 participants felt very comfortable with the two-handed interface and 4 felt comfortable. No statistically significant differences in performance were found between monoscopic and stereoscopic displays although 17 of 20 participants preferred the stereoscopic display over the monoscopic display.