CHORDBALL: A ROTATION TECHNIQUE FOR 3D VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS

Abstract

Rotation is one of the basic interaction tasks performed in 3D Virtual Environments (VEs). Chordball; a Rotation technique for touch-based, desktop and mouse-based 3D virtual environments was designed and evaluated. Index finger of a single hand was used for rotation about x, y and z axes. Interaction points, distance and direction of the finger‟s movement was traced for rotation about an axis. Torque-effect and rotation speed with respect to finger‟s move made the technique more realistic. The technique was implemented in Visual Stadio-10 using the OpenGl library and its performance was compared with other well-accepted rotation techniques. The technique was tested 288 times for rotation about different axes by twelve users. Statistical analysis revealed that the technique had better completion time with least loss of accuracy. It was concluded that the technique may improve rotation based interaction and can be used in a wide range of 3D virtual environments.