3D User Interface Design

[To my COMS W4172 students: Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but if you only mimic my project’s functionality and not expand on it, your grade will reflect this. You have been warned]

3D user interfaces are already essential to fields as diverse as scientific visualization and video games, and are becoming even more important as the major personal computer and smartphone user interfaces incorporate 3D technology. This course, taught at Columbia University by Prof. Steven K. Feiner, allows students to create their own user interfaces through the use of GoblinXNA, a framework developed by the Computer Graphics and User Interface Laboratory .
There are two main projects that I’ve done that are associated with this course:

-A basic AR UI (video shown below)

3DUI – demo from Nicolas Dedual on Vimeo.

And the Manhattanville Augmented Reality Video information Navigator, an AR system that served as a prototype Geographic Information System. This project was done in collaboration with Brian Smith and Sean Hernandez. The video of MARVIN in action is below.

M.A.R.V.I.N. Video Demonstration from Nicolas Dedual on Vimeo.

Coincidentally, MARVIN has found new life! It is the cornerstone of the 3DGARS system, a GIS system developed by Bruno St-Aubin (from the Universite Laval) and myself. It is scheduled to appear at the Canadian Geomatics Conference in Alberta, Canada in June 2010!