A multimodal virtual reality interface for 3D interaction with VTK

The object-oriented visualization Toolkit (VTK) is widely used for scientific visualization. VTK is a visualization library that provides a large number of functions for presenting three-dimensional data. Interaction with the visualized data is controlled with two-dimensional input devices, such as mouse and keyboard. Support for real three-dimensional and multimodal input is non-existent. This paper describes VR-VTK: a multimodal interface to VTK on a virtual environment. Six degree of freedom input devices are used for spatial 3D interaction. They control the 3D widgets that are used to interact with the visualized data. Head tracking is used for camera control. Pedals are used for clutching. Speech input is used for application commands and system control. To address several problems specific for spatial 3D interaction, a number of additional features, such as more complex interaction methods and enhanced depth perception, are discussed. Furthermore, the need for multimodal input to support interaction with the visualization is shown. Two existing VTK applications are ported using VR-VTK to run in a desktop virtual reality system. Informal user experiences are presented.