3D interaction design and application development

Abstract

Human-computer interaction (HCI) is an area concerned with the design, evaluation and implementation of interactive computing systems for human use. A 3D environment makes use of the HCI to provide visual and tactile interaction to the user. However the HCI hardware devices and software development are expensive. Hence it is essential to explore an affordable solution for HCI that can be implemented for educational and research uses. The interface should be easy to use, easy to implement, reusable for other program and less costly to develop. The scope of this research covers hardware and software interfacing of various commercially available input devices into the different applications for evaluation. The proposed research used inexpensive commercially available devices such as steering wheel device and P5 data game glove to provide the visual and tactile interface for the 3D environment. The objective of this research is to develop a reusable and inexpensive interactive interfacing solution for the 3D environment. This interfacing solution includes a 3D interaction module that is developed to integrate different game devices into the 3D environment. It allows different applications to interface with the commercial game devices easily and the integration is straightforward and cost effective. The research concluded with three applications that were developed using the 3D interaction module.