Design and Evaluation of Gesture Interface of an Immersive Walk-through Application for Exploring Cyberspace

We have developed an application of a full-body, noncontact gesture interface for exploring cyberspace that provides immersive walk-through and information accessing capabilities. The VisTA-walk system is designed for use at the museum exhibitions where easy, durable, and pleasurable user interface is preferable. It uses a large projection screen for immersive cyberspace presentation. VisTA-walk allows the user to walk through avirtual villageso 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 walkthrough 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.