3DUIdol - 6th annual 3DUI contest

The 6th annual IEEE 3DUI contest focuses on Virtual Music Instruments (VMIs), and on 3D user interfaces for playing them. The Contest is part of the IEEE 2015 3DUI Symposium held in Arles, France. The contest is open to anyone interested in 3D User Interfaces (3DUIs), from researchers to students, enthusiasts, and professionals. The purpose of the contest is to stimulate innovative and creative solutions to challenging 3DUI problems. Due to the recent explosion of affordable and portable 3D devices, this year’s contest will be judged live at 3DUI. The judgment will be done by selected 3DUI experts during on-site presentation during the conference. Therefore, contestants are required to bring their systems for live judging and for attendees to experience them. The announced task is to build a VMI with at least one innovative 3DUI (3DUI VMI). The specific system to be implemented and presented has to fulfill certain requirements. The first requirement to be fulfilled by the solutions is that the interaction techniques to play the music with the newly developed VMI have to be 3DUIs, which excludes classic interaction hardware such as keyboard and mouse; these may be used, but not to play the instrument. Virtual environments and display systems can be part of the solution but do not count as 3DUIs. The proposed 3DUI VMI could be an innovative remake of an existing instrument, a combination of multiple musical instruments, or a completely new creation, but should focus on an innovative 3DUI. The second requirement for the 3DUI VMI is that it is able to play simple notes and chords. Two sample scales have been provided and one sample chord, which have to be playable using the 3DUI VMI and which will be performed as part of the ending ceremony of the contest together with all contestants. Thus, this scale specifies the minimum requirement to the 3DUI VMI capabilities. The third requirement is that the 3DUI VMI also needs to be able to play chords. It is also fine if the 3DUI VMI supports predefined macros for chords, like those from digital instruments such as keyboards, where only one key has to be pressed to produce a threeor four-note chord. For example, when a user is playing single notes, such as the C note, the 3DUI VMI may automatically play a pregenerated C chord. These features should be accessible through the 3DUI of the VMI using specific interaction techniques, separating the playing of simple notes from playing chords. A further optional feature of the VMI could be to enable the user to play beats. The fourth requirement is that the use of the 3DUI VMI can be simply learned, such that the given scale is very easily played by everybody who can read music. The contestant can also design an interaction method for people who cannot read music to play the scales and songs. Nevertheless, the 3DUI VMI should be versatile in the sense that it can also be used with other scores than the one provided. The judges may have surprising scores to test the 3DUI VMIs during the demo. The fifth requirement is that a user should be able to play the song Frre Jacques as provided by the contest organizers with the