Three-dimensional widgets

The 3D components of today’s user interfaces are still underdeveloped.
Direct interaction with 3D objects has been limited thus far
to gestural picking, manipulation with linear transformations, and
simple camera motion. Further, there are no toolkits for building
3D user interfaces. We present a systemwhich allows experimentation
with 3D widgets, encapsulated 3D geometry and behavior. Our
widgets are first-class objects in the same 3D environment used to
develop the application. This integration ofwidgets and application
objects provides a higher bandwidth between interface and application
than exists in more traditional UI toolkit-based interfaces. We
hope to allow user-interface designers to build highly interactive
3D environments more easily than is possible with today’s tools.