Pockets: User-Assigned Menus Based on Physical Buttons for Virtual Environments

PubDate: August 2021

Teams: MIT Media Lab

Writers: Aubrey Simonson

PDF: Pockets: User-Assigned Menus Based on Physical Buttons for Virtual Environments

Abstract

We present Pockets, a simple means of organizing and carrying 3D tools and other objects in virtual environments. Previous examples exist of using 3D tools with visually obvious affordances in virtual immersive environments instead of more traditional menus, however, in these applications a 2D menu is still necessary to select 3D tools from. Pockets make use of a belt with physical buttons, that objects can be assigned to. The Pockets design not only enables users to use their muscle memory to store and retrieve objects, thereby making tool use more efficient, but also solves the occlusion problem associated with state of the art approaches such as 2D menus tied to the body or to world space.