Stereo 3D Mouse Cursor: A Method for Interaction with 3D Objects in a Stereoscopic Virtual 3D Space

We introduce a different approach of applying stereoscopy principles to implement a virtual 3D pointing technique called stereo 3D mouse cursor (S3D-Cursor) based on two or more views of an ordinary mouse cursor. The basics of such an idea have already been applied as a by-product of some stereo-based visualization applications with usually less attention to its strengths or weaknesses as a generic alternative of its 2D counterpart in stereoscopic 3D space. Here, we examine if such an idea satisfies all or the main expected requirements of an abstract 3D cursor. Moreover, we analyze its accuracy and evaluate the applicability of this approach in terms of different efficiency factors. For this purpose, we have adapted a real-time point-based rendering software called QSplat to a multiview rendering version named QSplatMV. We have implemented the S3D-Cursor on top of this new application and developed a simple editing toolset for manipulating the virtual 3D objects. Our user evaluation results suggest the effectiveness of the approach in terms of detection accuracy and user satisfaction compared to using an ordinary mouse cursor on a conventional 2D screen. 1. Introduction The stereopsis capability of the human vision is one of the primary means used by our vision system to give us a 3D perception of the world [1]. This ability allows us to have a sense of the 3rd dimension from the two slightly different images of the world projected onto our eyes retina. Benefiting from this intrinsic ability, a wide variety of different stereoscopic devices and techniques are employed to create the illusion of depth from the visual stereo contents. Recent advances in these technologies enable the users to watch contents in 3D without using any filtering glasses (multiview autostereoscopic 3D displays [2]) or watch 3D contents in full-colour on conventional displays (colour code glasses [3]). Along with these advances in stereoscopic display technologies it is also necessary to evolve the current 2D/3D interaction techniques and devices for interplay with these new attractive virtual 3D environments. Among these, pointing to the targets (objects or other GUI components) using some devices such as mouse is probably the most appealing interaction method especially useful to work within the graphics environments [4]. For this reason, providing the possibility of pointing to any arbitrary voxel of the 3D space is one of the first expectations of any user who wants to migrate from 2D to 3D space applications. In this regard, several 3D pointing techniques (or in broader