Stanislav L. Stoev

Interactive cloth simulation in virtual environments

Current cloth simulation systems have become powerful enough to be used interactively, and applications relevant to textile industries like virtually tailoring real garments seem to be possible in the near future. We show that interactive cloth simulation can be improved by virtual reality techniques. We present the Virtual Dressmaker, an application for interactive assembly and physically based interactive simulation of cloth. In particular, the system allows us to select and drag parts of the clothes during the simulation. The proposed application consists of a VR-interface client that provides nearly live-size stereo projection combined with 6DOF interaction and a server for physically based cloth simulation. In order to verify the usability of our approach, we elaborate on usability studies, which show that our application allows fast, easy, and precise interaction compared to interaction with a traditional 3D-desktop application based on 2D input devices.

An application-independent intelligent user support system exploiting action-sequence based user modelling

Many software systems’ usability suffers from their complexity, usually caused by the market-driven trend to bundle a huge amount of features, which are supposed to increase the product’s attractiveness. This attempt, however, more often than not leads to software with poor usability characteristics, therefore requiring an extensive amount of initial effort for the users to become familiar with the system. One way to overcome this problem is by providing user-adapted usage support.

Application and taxonomy of through-the-lens techniques

In this work, we present a set of tools based on the through-the-lens metaphor. This metaphor enables simultaneous exploration of a virtual world from two different viewpoints. The one is used to display the surrounding environment and represents the user, the other is interactively manipulated and the resulting images are displayed in a dedicated window. We discuss in detail the various different states of the two viewpoints and the two synthetic worlds, introducing taxonomy for their relationship to each other. We also elaborate on navigation with the through-the-lens concept extending the ideas behind known tools. Furthermore, we also present a new remote object manipulation technique based on the through-the-lens concept.

Two-handed through-the-lens-techniques for navigation in virtual environments

We present a tool set of techniques for navigation in virtual environments. Based on a through-the-lens concept, the user is enabled to simultaneously view the surrounding virtual world and an arbitrary location of the virtual world as seen through an interactively defined window. For the manipulation and the adjustment of this virtual window we propose three different strategies, loosely based on the well-known eyeball-in-hand, scene-in-hand, and world-in-miniature techniques. Since our technique provides a preview area with controllable size and position, the occluded part of the scene can be flexibly managed, while enabling intuitive and precise work with the proposed tools. The proposed techniques provide powerful tools that are easy to implement and can be applied in any type of virtual environments.

Exploring the past: a toolset for visualization of historical events in virtual environments

In this paper, we present a set of tools and techniques for visualization of and interaction with historical data. First, we briefly describe the data acquisition and preparation. Afterwards, we discuss in detail the interaction approaches for exploration of historical data, containing a time dimension. In particular, we propose (1) a continuous time increment approach for visualizing 3D slices continuously moving in the 4D space; (2) a fly-with mode for viewing the scene from the perspective of the participants in the migration, we are visualizing; (3) a time lens, as an extension of the traditional magic lens for viewing arbitrary event times; (4) a time-space exploration tool for simultaneous viewing more than one event time and location of interest; (5) a guided exploration tool, which allows for viewing events on an interactively defined or pre-defined path in space. Finally, we conclude the paper with a discussion and comparison of the proposed tools.

A comparative study on user performance in the Virtual Dressmaker application

We report on a user study, investigating the efficiency of user interaction in a Virtual Reality application compared to 3D desktop applications.The Virtual Dressmaker is a Virtual Reality application for virtual cloth design, assembly, and simulation that supports advanced 6DoF interaction techniques. We conjecture that these interaction techniques are more natural for the users and lead to faster and more precise results than common desktop applications.In our user study we investigate interaction tools for positioning garment patterns in VR and compare the results to interaction with common 3D desktop applications. We measure completion time and precision of the positioned patterns and evaluate the subjective impressions of the users.The results show that Virtual Environments, and the presented interaction tools in particular, provide a valuable method for cloth design and assembly. Moreover, certain features of current 3D desktop design tools can be exploited for further improvements of VR interaction.

The through-the-lens metaphor: taxonomy and application

We present a set of tools based on the through-the-lens metaphor. This metaphor enables simultaneous exploration of a virtual world from two different viewpoints. The one is used to display the surrounding environment and represents the user, the other is interactively adjusted and the resulting images are displayed in a dedicated window.

Accelerated rendering in stereo-based projections (poster session)

In this work, we present a new method for displaying stereo scenes, which speeds up the rendering time of complex geometry. We first discuss a scene splitting strategy, allowing us to partition objects to the distant background or the near foreground. Furthermore, wededuce a computation rule for positioning a cutting plane in the scene.

Interaction, navigation, and visualization props in complex virtual environments using image based rendering techniques

Present an image-based technique for accelerated rendering of world-in-miniature (WIM)-based and multiple-viewpoint-based props. The WIM technique offers an intuitive and useful tool for navigation and manipulation within virtual environments. The multiple-viewpoint technique is often applied for enhancing visualization and navigation. Unfortunately, both approaches require multiple rendering of the viewed data. This can significantly deteriorate the frame rate and negatively influence the interaction. The proposed approach circumvents this drawback, while still providing the features of these tools.