Showing papers by "Randy Pausch published in 1992"

A literature survey for virtual environments: Military flight simulator visual systems and simulator sickness

Abstract: Researchers in the field of virtual environments VE, or virtual reality, surround a participant with synthetic stimuli, The flight simulator community, primarily in the U.S. military, has a great deal of experience with aircraft simulations, and VE researchers should be aware of the major results in this field. In this survey of the literature, we have especially focused on military literature that may be hard for traditional academics to locate via the standard journals. One of the authors of this paper is a military helicopter pilot himself, which was quite useful in obtaining access to many of our references. We concentrate on research that produces specific, measured results that apply to VE research. We assume no background other than basic knowledge of computer graphics, and explain simulator terms and concepts as necessary. This paper ends with an annotated bibliography of some harder to find research results in the field of flight simulators: • The effects of display parameters, including field-of-view and scene complexity; • The effect of lag in system response; • The effect of refresh rate in graphics update; • The existing theories on causes of simulator sickness; and • The after-effects of simulator use Many of the results we cite are contradictory. Our global observation is that with flight simulator research, like most human-computer interaction research, there are very few “correct” answers. Almost always, the answer to a specific question depends on the task the user was attempting to perform with the simulator.

Lessons learned from SUIT, the simple user interface toolkit

Abstract: In recent years, the computer science community has realized the advantages of GUIs (Graphical User Interfaces). Because high-quality GUIs are difficult to build, support tools such as UIMSs, UI Toolkits, and Interface Builders have been developed. Although these tools are powerful, they typically make two assumptions: first, that the programmer has some familiarity with the GUI model, and second, that he is willing to invest several weeks becoming proficient with the tool. These tools typically operate only on specific platforms, such as DOS, the Macintosh, or UNIX/X-windows.The existing tools are beyond the reach of most undergraduate computer science majors, or professional programmers who wish to quickly build GUIs without investing the time to become specialists in GUI design. For this class of users, we developed SUIT, the Simple User Iinterface Toolkit. SUIT is an attempt to distill the fundamental components of an interface builder and GUI toolkit, and to explain those concepts with the tool itself, all in a short period of time. We have measured that college juniors with no previous GUI programming experience can use SUIT productively after less than three hours. SUIT is a C subroutine library which provides an external control UIMS, an interactive layout editor, and a set of standard “widgets,” such as sliders, buttons, and check boxes. SUIT-based applications run transparently across the Macintosh, DOS, and UNIX/X platforms. SUIT has been exported to hundreds of external sites on the internet. This paper describes SUIT's architecture, the design decisions we made during its development, and the lessons we learned from extensive observations of over 120 users.

One dimensional motion tailoring for the disabled: a user study

Abstract: The Tailor project allows physically disabled users to provide real-time analog input to computer applications. We use a Polhemus tracking device and create a custom tailored mapping from each user's best range and type of motion into the analog control signal. The application is a simple video game based on Pong, where the analog input controls the position of the player's paddle. A group of able-bodied subjects was able to correctly hit the ball with the paddle 77% of the time, and a comparison group of children with Cerebral Palsy performed at the 50% level. More than half the disabled users were able to perform at a higher level than the worst able-bodied user.

SUIT: the simple user interface toolkit

Abstract: User interface support software, such as UI toolkits, UIMSs, and interface builders, are currently too complex for undergraduates. Tools typically require a learning period of several weeks, which is impractical in a semester course. Most tools are also limited to a specific platform, usually either Macintosh, DOS, or UNIX/X. This is problematic for students who switch from DOS or Macintosh machines to UNIX machines as they move through the curriculum. The situation is similar to programming languages before the introduction of Pascal, which provided an easily ported, easily learned language for undergraduate instruction.