skip to main content
research-article

Web5VR: A Flexible Framework for Integrating Virtual Reality Input and Output Devices on the Web

Published:19 June 2018Publication History
Skip Abstract Section

Abstract

The availability of consumer-level devices for both visualising and interacting with Virtual Reality (VR) environments opens the opportunity to introduce more immersive contents and experiences, even on the web. For reaching a wider audience, developing VR applications in a web environment requires a flexible adaptation to the different input and output devices that are currently available. This paper examines the required support and explores how to develop VR applications based on web technologies that can adapt to different VR devices. We summarize the main engineering challenges and we describe a flexible framework for integrating and exploiting various VR devices for both input and output. Using such framework, we describe how we re-implemented four manipulation techniques from the literature to enable them within the same application, providing details on how we adapted its parts for different input and output devices such as Kinect and Leap Motion. Finally, we briefly examine the usability of the final application using our framework.

References

  1. Ferran Argelaguet and Carlos Andujar. 2013. A survey of 3D object selection techniques for virtual environments. Computers & Graphics 37, 3 (2013), 121 -- 136. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  2. Stephen Block, Rich Tibbett, Andrei Popescu, and Tim Volodine. 2016. DeviceOrientation Event Specification. Candidate Recommendation. W3C. https://www.w3.org/TR/2016/CR-orientation-event-20160818/.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  3. Doug Bowman, Ernst Kruijff, Joseph J LaViola Jr, and Ivan Poupyrev. 2004. 3D User Interfaces: Theory and Practice, CourseSmart eTextbook. Addison-Wesley. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  4. Doug A. Bowman and Larry F. Hodges. 1997. An Evaluation of Techniques for Grabbing and Manipulating Remote Objects in Immersive Virtual Environments. In Proceedings of the 1997 Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics (I3D '97). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 35--ff. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  5. Doug A. Bowman, Ryan P. McMahan, and Eric D. Ragan. 2012. Questioning Naturalism in 3D User Interfaces. Commun. ACM 55, 9 (Sept. 2012), 78--88. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  6. Alessandro Carcangiu, Gianni Fenu, and Lucio Davide Spano. 2016. A Design Pattern for Multimodal and Multidevice User Interfaces. In Proceedings of the 8th ACM SIGCHI Symposium on Engineering Interactive Computing Systems (EICS '16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 177--182. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  7. David Catuhe and David Rousset. 2013. Babylon JS. https://github.com/BabylonJS. (2013).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  8. Cooper Davies, Jade White, Alec McAllister, Adam Saroka, Omar Addam, Fatemeh Hendijani Fard, and Frank Maurer. 2016. A Toolkit for Building Collaborative Immersive Multi-Surface Applications. In Proceedings of the 2016 ACM on Interactive Surfaces and Spaces (ISS '16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 485--488. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  9. I. Fette and A. Melnikov. 2011. The WebSocket Protocol. RFC 6455. RFC Editor. 1--70 pages. https://tools.ietf.org/html/ rfc6455Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  10. Simon Fothergill, Helena Mentis, Pushmeet Kohli, and Sebastian Nowozin. 2012. Instructing People for Training Gestural Interactive Systems. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '12). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1737--1746. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  11. Mozilla Foundation. 2017. A-Frame. https://aframe.io/. (2017).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  12. Giuseppe Ghiani, Marco Manca, and Fabio Paternò. 2015. Authoring Context-dependent Cross-device User Interfaces Based on Trigger/Action Rules. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia (MUM '15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 313--322. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  13. Khronos Group. 2016. OpenGL ES Specification. http://www.khronos.org/registry/OpenGL/index_es.php. (2016).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  14. Maria Husmann, Nina Heyder, and Moira C. Norrie. 2016. Is a Framework Enough?: Cross-device Testing and Debugging. In Proceedings of the 8th ACM SIGCHI Symposium on Engineering Interactive Computing Systems (EICS '16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 251--262. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  15. Dean Jackson and Jeff Gilbert. 2017. WebGL 2 Specification. Editor's Draft. Kronos Group. https://www.khronos.org/registry/webgl/specs/latest/2.0/.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  16. Taeho Kim and Jinah Park. 2014. 3D Object Manipulation Using Virtual Handles with a Grabbing Metaphor. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 34, 3 (May 2014), 30--38. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/lpdocs/epic03/wrapper.htm? arnumber=6762796Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  17. Joseph J. LaViola and Daniel F. Keefe. 2011. 3D Spatial Interaction: Applications for Art, Design, and Science. In ACM SIGGRAPH 2011 Courses (SIGGRAPH '11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article 1, 75 pages. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  18. Shahzad Malik and Joe Laszlo. 2004. Visual Touchpad: A Two-handed Gestural Input Device. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces (ICMI '04). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 289--296. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  19. Daniel Mendes, Filipe Relvas, Alfredo Ferreira, and Joaquim Jorge. 2016. The benefits of DOF separation in mid-air 3D object manipulation. In Proceedings of the 22nd ACM Conference on Virtual Reality Software and Technology. ACM, 261--268. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  20. Mark R Mine, Frederick P Brooks Jr, and Carlo H Sequin. 1997. Moving objects in space: exploiting proprioception in virtual-environment interaction. In Proceedings of the 24th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques. ACM Press/Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 19--26. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  21. Michael Nebeling, Theano Mintsi, Maria Husmann, and Moira Norrie. 2014. Interactive Development of Cross-device User Interfaces. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2793--2802. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  22. Michael Nebeling, Elena Teunissen, Maria Husmann, and Moira C. Norrie. 2014. XDKinect: Development Framework for Cross-device Interaction Using Kinect. In Proceedings of the 2014 ACM SIGCHI Symposium on Engineering Interactive Computing Systems (EICS '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 65--74. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  23. Thi Thuong Huyen Nguyen, Thierry Duval, and Charles Pontonnier. 2014. A new direct manipulation technique for immersive 3d virtual environments. In ICAT-EGVE 2014: the 24th International Conference on Artificial Reality and Telexistence and the 19th Eurographics Symposium on Virtual Environments. 8. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  24. Jeffrey S. Pierce and Jeffrey Nichols. 2008. An Infrastructure for Extending Applications' User Experiences Across Multiple Personal Devices. In Proceedings of the 21st Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '08). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 101--110. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  25. Playcanvas. 2017. Playcanvas game engine. https://playcanvas.com/. (2017).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  26. Ivan Poupyrev, Mark Billinghurst, Suzanne Weghorst, and Tadao Ichikawa. 1996. The Go-go Interaction Technique: Non-linear Mapping for Direct Manipulation in VR. In Proceedings of the 9th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '96). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 79--80. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  27. Teddy Seyed, Alaa Azazi, Edwin Chan, Yuxi Wang, and Frank Maurer. 2015. SoD-Toolkit: A Toolkit for Interactively Prototyping and Developing Multi-Sensor, Multi-Device Environments. In Proceedings of the 2015 International Conference on Interactive Tabletops & Surfaces (ITS '15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 171--180. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  28. Peng Song, Wooi Boon Goh, William Hutama, Chi-Wing Fu, and Xiaopei Liu. 2012. A Handle Bar Metaphor for Virtual Object Manipulation with Mid-air Interaction. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '12). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1297--1306. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  29. Richard Stoakley, Matthew J. Conway, and Randy Pausch. 1995. Virtual Reality on a WIM: Interactive Worlds in Miniature. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '95). ACM Press/Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., New York, NY, USA, 265--272. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  30. Three JS. 2017. Three JS documentation. https://threejs.org/. (2017). Accessed: 2017-07--16.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  31. Radu-Daniel Vatavu. 2012. User-defined Gestures for Free-hand TV Control. In Proceedings of the 10th European Conference on Interactive Tv and Video (EuroiTV '12). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 45--48. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  32. Radu-Daniel Vatavu and Stefan-Gheorghe Pentiuc. 2008. Interactive Coffee Tables: Interfacing TV within an Intuitive, Fun and Shared Experience. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, Berlin, Heidelberg, 183--187.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  33. Radu-Daniel Vatavu, Ştefan-Gheorghe Pentiuc, Christophe Chaillou, Laurent Grisoni, and Samuel Degrande. 2006. Visual recognition of hand postures for interacting with virtual environments. Advances in Electrical and Computer Engineering 6, 13 (2006), 55--58.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  34. Radu-Daniel Vatavu and Ionut-Alexandru Zaiti. 2014. Leap Gestures for TV: Insights from an Elicitation Study. In Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Interactive Experiences for TV and Online Video (TVX '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 131--138. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  35. Manuel Veit, Antonio Capobianco, and Dominique Bechmann. 2009. Influence of Degrees of Freedom's Manipulation on Performances During Orientation Tasks in Virtual Reality Environments. In Proceedings of the 16th ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST '09). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 51--58. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  36. Vladimir Vukicevic, Brandon Jones, Kearwood Gilbert, and Chris Van Wiemeersch. 2017. WebVR Editor's Draft. https://w3c.github.io/webvr/spec/1.1/. (2017). Accessed: 2017-07--16.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  37. Rick Waldron, Mikhail Pozdnyakov, and Alexander Shalamov. 2017. Generic Sensor API. Editor's Draft. W3C. https://w3c.github.io/sensors/.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  38. Andrew D. Wilson. 2006. Robust Computer Vision-based Detection of Pinching for One and Two-handed Gesture Input. In Proceedings of the 19th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '06). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 255--258. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  39. Chadwick A Wingrave, Doug A Bowman, and Naren Ramakrishnan. 2002. Towards preferences in virtual environment interfaces. In EGVE, Vol. 2. 63--72 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library

Index Terms

  1. Web5VR: A Flexible Framework for Integrating Virtual Reality Input and Output Devices on the Web

      Recommendations

      Comments

      Login options

      Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

      Sign in

      Full Access

      PDF Format

      View or Download as a PDF file.

      PDF

      eReader

      View online with eReader.

      eReader
      About Cookies On This Site

      We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website.

      Learn more

      Got it!