A Zoomable 3D User Interface using Uniform Grids and Scene Graphs

• Main Author: Rinne, Vidar
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Mälardalens högskola, Akademin för innovation, design och teknik 2011
• Subjects: Zoomable 3D User Interface; 3D-ZUI; uniform grid; cell; voxel; scene graph; tree; node; bounding volume hierarchy; BVH; picking; collision detection; 3D-models; three-dimensional space; framework; shader; OpenGL; Computer Graphics; phong lightning
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mdh:diva-13360

Zoomable user interfaces (ZUIs) have been studied for a long time and many applications are built upon them. Most applications, however, only use two dimensions to express the content. This report presents a solution using all three dimensions where the base features are built as a framework with uniform grids and scene graphs as primary data structures. The purpose of these data structures is to improve performance while maintaining flexibility when creating and handling three-dimensional objects. A 3D-ZUI is able to represent the view of the world and its objects in a more lifelike manner. It is possible to interact with the objects much in the same way as in real world. By developing a prototype framework as well as some example applications, the usefulness of 3D-ZUIs is illustrated. Since the framework relies on abstraction and object-oriented principles it is easy to maintain and extend it as needed. The currently implemented data structures are well motivated for a large scale 3D-ZUI in terms of accelerated collision detection and picking and they also provide a flexible base when developing applications. It is possible to further improve performance of the framework, for example by supporting different types of culling and levels of detail