Workshop on Emerging Novel Input Devices and Interaction Techniques. Workshop hosted by IEEE VR 2022, March 12-13, 2022, Christchurch, New Zealand, (Online)

Virtual reality has finally become a mainstream technology. Recent advances in commercial VR hardware have led to high-resolution, ergonomic, – and critically – low cost head-mounted displays. Advances in commercial input devices and interaction techniques have arguably not kept pace with advances in displays. For instance, most HMDs include a tracked input device and these “controllers” are still fairly similar to the earliest examples of 3D controllers used in the VR systems of the 1980s. Interaction in commercial VR systems has similarly lagged; despite many advances in 3D interaction in the past three decades of VR research, interaction in commercial systems largely relies on classical techniques like the virtual hand or ray-casting.

Topics

This full-day workshop will bring together researchers and industry practitioners to discuss and experience the future of input devices for VR, AR, and 3D User Interfaces, and help chart a course for the future of 3D interaction techniques. We invite authors to submit 4-6 page papers on any of the following topics:

§ Form factors and ergonomics of input devices

§ Hardware design and prototyping

§ Mapping of input to varying degrees of freedom

§ Haptic/tactile feedback

§ Novel input devices

§ Repurposing of existing devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets) for immersive contexts

§ Tracked passive or custom props

§ Novel interaction techniques supported by custom devices

§ User studies evaluating the above topics

Related but unlisted topics are also welcome. In addition to a presentation at the workshop, authors of all accepted submissions will be strongly encouraged to demonstrate their novel input device and interaction techniques in an interactive demo format following the presentations.

Important Dates:

• IEEE VR Conference Papers Author Notification: December 22, 2021, AoE

• Submission Deadline: January 12, 2022 January 14, 2022, AoE (If you are submitting a paper from the VR conference track, please include review and changes)

• Notification Deadline: January 20, 2022, AoE

• Camera-Ready: January 27, 2022, AoE

Submission Information:

Papers should be submitted via PCS: https://new.precisionconference.com

Submissions must be anonymized and in PDF format, in the VGTC format: http://junctionpublishing.org/vgtc/Tasks/camera.html

All submissions will be reviewed by experts in the areas listed above. At least one author of each accepted submission must register for the workshop and IEEE VR 2021 conference. Authors of accepted papers will be expected to give a 10 minute at the workshop, and encouraged to give a demonstration of their research as a video. Proceedings will be submitted for inclusion in the IEEE Xplore Library. We will also host the papers in this site.

Organizers:

Anil Ufuk Batmaz, aubatmaz@khas.edu.tr

Francisco R. Ortega, fortega@colostate.edu

Robert J. Teather, rob.teather@carleton.ca

Adalberto L. Simeone, adalberto.simeone@kuleuven.be

Wolfgang Stuerzlinger, w.s@sfu.ca

Benjamin Weyers, weyers@uni-trier.de

Contact:

Please send any questions to Anil Ufuk Batmaz (aubatmaz@khas.edu.tr) or Francisco R. Ortega (fortega@colostate.edu)

Keynote Speaker: Anthony Steed (http://www0.cs.ucl.ac.uk/people/A.Steed.html)

Title: What We Can Learn from Consumer VR Games

Abstract: Thousands of games and experiences have now solicited millions of hours of play time on consumer VR hardware. In this talk I will reflect on what we can learn from studying examples of good design from the consumer VR sphere. We will discuss some specific constraints that consumer VR systems need to work with and how these are different generate new challenges for researchers interested in the future of 3D user interfaces. I will then present some interaction examples that were identified in a crowd-sourcing activity that encouraged members of the 3DUI and games development communities to suggest interesting designs. These examples are not just interesting solutions to specific user interface design questions, but can inspire new research questions for our community.

Short Bio: Anthony Steed is Head of the Virtual Environments and Computer Graphics group in the Department of Computer Science at University College London. He has over 25 years’ experience in developing effective immersive experiences. While his early work focussed on the engineering of displays and software, more recently it has focussed on user engagement in collaborative and telepresent scenarios. He received the IEEE VGTC’s 2016 Virtual Reality Technical Achievement Award. Recently he was a Visiting Researcher at Microsoft Research, Redmond and an Erskine Fellow at the Human Interface Technology Laboratory in Christchurch, New Zealand.