Design and Evaluation of Gesture Interface of an Immersive
Walk-through Application for Exploring Cyberspace
We have developed an application of a full-body, non-contact gesture
interface for exploring cyberspace that provides immersive
walk-through and information accessing capabilities. Man-machine
interfaces used for exhibits at museums or galleries must be easy to
access and durable as well as pleasurable. However, the user
interfaces currently available for cyberspace are not only cumbersome
for the general public, but also have not been specifically designed
for such exhibits. The VisTA system is an interactive simulation tool
for handling archaeological data. It is designed for use by both
museum researchers and visitors and has been extended to incorporate a
gesture-based interface system, which we named VisTA-walk. VisTA-walk
uses a large projection screen for immersive cyberspace
presentation. It allows the user to walk through ``virtual villages''
by taking physical steps and to retrieve information on objects
displayed in the scene by pointing at them. We carefully designed the
interface of VisTA-walk with a simple video-based gesture recognition
module, providing it with a minimal but comprehensive set of gestures
as its vocabulary. The mouse and gesture-based interfaces are compared
through subjective experimentation on walk-through capability for ease
of use and degree of immersiveness. The immersiveness achieved by the
combined use of the large screen and gesture interaction is
comprehensively evaluated.