Advances in Interaction with 3D Environments

Various interaction techniques have been developed for interactive 3D environments. This paper presents an up-to-date and comprehensive review of the state of the art of non-immersive interaction techniques for Navigation, Selection & Manipulation, and System Control, including a basic introduction to the topic, the challenges and an examination of a number of popular approaches. We also introduce 3D Interaction Testbed 3DIT to firstly allow a 'hands-on' understanding of 3D interaction principles, and secondly to create an open platform for defining evaluation methods, stimuli as well as representative tasks akin to those found in other disciplines of science. We hope that this survey can aid both researchers and developers of interactive 3D applications in having a clearer overview of the topic and in particular can be useful for practitioners and researchers that are new to the field of interactive 3D graphics.