In this project, we present our solution to the 2022 3DUI Contest challenge. We aim to provide an immersive VR experience to increase player’s awareness of trash pollution in the ocean while improving the current interaction techniques in virtual environments. To achieve these objectives, we adapted two classic interaction techniques, Go-Go and World in Miniature (WiM), to provide an engaging minigame in which the user collects the trash in the ocean. To improve the precision and address occlusion issues in the traditional Go-Go technique we propose ReX Go-Go. We also propose an adaptation to WiM, referred to as Rabbit-Out-of-the-Hat to allow an exocentric interaction for easier object retrieval interaction.
To present our solution, we integrated our techniques in a fictional story in which participants have to clear the trashes in the ocean to prevent the sea monsters from growing and damaging the environment.
The Ocean scenery used in this project.
The original GoGo technique facilitate egocentric selection and manipulation of 3D objects located far-away. However, it could be cumbersome to use when the targets are cluttered together and occluded by other objects (see left picture). The right picture shows our enhancement to the GoGo, in which we integrated X-Ray vision and relative mapping to offer easy and precise selections of occluded and cluttered objects. Objects between the GoGo hand and user's head will turn transparent to ensure visibility. We also vary the control/display ratio of the GoGo hand adaptively based on how fast users' hands move, so users could select objects precisely by moving their hands slowly.
Original GoGo
GoGo with X-Ray and Relative Mapping
The original World-in-miniature (WiM) technique provided a exocentric solution to long-range selection and manipulation of 3D objects. However, it cold be challenging to bring the objects to the user for direct manipulaitions (see left picture). The right picture shows our enhancement to the original WiM, in which users could easily summon the virtual objects to their hands for direct manipulations by pulling them outside the WiM viewport, akin to how you would pull a rabbit out of the hat during a magic trick.
Original WiM
WiM with "Rabbit out of the Hat"
Below is a video of the full 6-min playthrough.
This demo project won the Best 3DUI Award at the 2022 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces.
Lisle, L. et al. (2022, March). Clean the Ocean: An Immersive VR Experience Proposing New Modifications to Go-Go and WiM Techniques. In 2022 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW) (pp. 920-921). IEEE. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/VRW55335.2022.00311
If you would like to try out the demo yourself, here are the links to the Oculus Quest 2 Installation Package and HTC Vive / Valve Index demo app.