0 Carlos Andujar, Ferran Argelaguet, Ramon Trueba 2010 Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 19 499–512 The world-in-miniature metaphor (WIM) allows users to select, manipulate, and nav- igate efficiently in virtual environments. In addition to the first-person perspective offered by typical virtual reality (VR) applications, the WIM offers a second dynamic viewpoint through a hand-held miniature copy of the environment. In this paper we explore different strategies to allow the user to interact with the miniature replica at multiple levels of scale. Unlike competing approaches, we support complex indoor environments by explicitly handling occlusion. We discuss algorithms for selecting the part of the scene to be included in the replica, and for providing a clear view of the region of interest. Key elements of our approach include an algorithm to recompute the active region from a subdivision of the scene into cells, and a view-dependent algorithm to cull occluding geometry. Our cutaway algorithm is based on a small set of slicing planes roughly oriented along the main occluding surfaces, along with depth- based revealing for nonplanar geometry. We present the results of a user study showing that our technique clearly outperforms competing approaches on spatial tasks performed in densely occluded scenes. 0 Ramon Trueba, Carlos Andujar, Ferran Argelaguet 2010 International Journal of Creative Interfaces and Computer Graphics 1 1-14 Object occlusion is a major handicap for efficient interaction with 3D virtual environments. The well-known World in Miniature (WIM) metaphor partially solves this problem by providing an additional dynamic view- point through a hand-held miniature copy of the scene. However, letting the miniature show a replica of the whole scene makes the WIM metaphor suitable for only relatively simple scenes due to occlusion and level of scale issues. In this paper, the authors propose several algorithms to extend the idea behind the WIM to arbitrarily complex scenes. The main idea is to automatically decompose indoor scenes into a collection of cells that define potential extents of the miniature replica. This cell decomposition works well for general indoor scenes and allows for simple and efficient algorithms for preserving the visibility of potential targets inside the cell. The authors also discuss how to support interaction at multiple levels of scale by allowing the user to select the WIM size according to the accuracy required for accomplishing the task. 3 Ramon Trueba, Carlos Andujar, Ferran Argelaguet 2009 SG '09: Proceedings of the 10th International Symposium on Smart Graphics Salamanca, Spain Springer-Verlag 155--166 The World in Miniature (WIM) metaphor allows users to interact and travel efficiently in virtual environments. In addition to the first-person perspective offered by typical VR applications, the WIM offers a second dynamic viewpoint through a hand-held miniature copy of the environment. In the original WIM paper the miniature was a scaled down replica of the whole scene, thus limiting its application to simple models being manipulated at a single level of scale. Several WIM extensions have been proposed where the replica shows only a part of the environment. In this paper we present a new approach to handle complexity and occlusion in the WIM. We discuss algorithms for selecting the region of the scene which will be covered by the miniature copy and for handling occlusion from an exocentric viewpoint. We also present the results of a user-study showing that our technique can greatly improve user performance on spatial tasks in densely-occluded scenes. 3 Ramon Trueba, Carlos Andujar, Ferran Argelaguet 2009 Joint Virtual Reality Conference of EGVE - ICAT - EuroVR (2009) Lyon, France <p><font face="NimbusRomNo9L-ReguItal" size="1"><font face="NimbusRomNo9L-ReguItal" size="1">The World in Miniature Metaphor (WIM) allows users to select, manipulate and navigate efficiently in virtual environments. In addition to the first-person perspective offered by typical VR applications, the WIM offers a second dynamic viewpoint through a hand-held miniature copy of the environment. In this paper we explore different strategies to allow the user to interact with the miniature replica at multiple levels of scale. Unlike competing approaches, we support complex indoor environments by explicitly handling occlusion. We discuss algorithms for selecting the part of the scene to be included in the replica, and for providing a clear view of the region of interest. Key elements of our approach include an algorithm to recompute the active region from a subdivision of the scene into cells, and a view-dependent algorithm to cull-away occluding geometry through a small set of slicing planes roughly oriented along the main occluding surfaces. We present the results of a user-study showing that our technique clearly outperforms competing approaches on spatial tasks performed in densely-occluded scenes.</font></font></p> 3 Ferran Argelaguet, Carlos Andujar, Ramon Trueba 2008 VRST ACM Most current pointing techniques for 3D selection on virtual environments rely on a ray originating at the user’s hand whose direction <br />is typically controlled by the hand orientation. In this paper we study the potential mismatch between visible objects (those which appear unoccluded from the user’s eye position) and selectable objects (those which appear unoccluded from the user’s hand position). We study the impact of such eye-hand visibility mismatch on selection performance, and propose a new technique for ray control which attempts to overcome this problem. We present several experiments to compare our ray control technique with classic raycasting in selection tasks with complex 3D scenes. Our user studies show promising results of the new technique in terms of speed, accuracy and user acceptance.