Integrating 2D Mouse Emulation with 3D Manipulation for Visualizations on a Multi-Touch Table
Master's thesis by Luc Vlaming
In his thesis Luc presents an interaction technique that augments existing mouse-based visualization applications by enabling touch interaction. Previously, this transition to a multi-touch environment was difficult because the existing mouse emulation for touch surfaces was often insufficient to provide full functionality. Luc's solution to this problem uses on-screen virtual mice, designed not only to provide mouse capabilities but also to act as toolglasses, taking advantage of their presence on the display itself. Developed together with a touch-enabled 3D window management system, Luc's approach permits touch interaction with both the 3D windowing environment as well as with the contents of the individual windows contained therein. Luc describes the implementation of my technique that augments the VisLink 3D visualization environment to demonstrate how to enable multi-touch capabilities on all visualizations written with the popular prefuse visualization toolkit.
You can download Luc Vlaming's Master's thesis here. Luc's work also lead to a paper at ITS 2010.