Generalized Trackball for Surfing Over Surfaces

We present an efficient 3D interaction technique: generalizing the well known trackball approach, this technique unifies and blends the two common interaction mechanisms known as panning and orbiting. The approach allows to inspect a virtual object by navigating over its surrounding space, remaining at a chosen distance and performing an automatic panning over its surface. This generalized trackball allows an intuitive navigation of topologically complex shapes, enabling unexperienced users to visit hard-to-reach parts better and faster than with standard GUI components. The approach is based on the construction of multiple smooth approximations of the model under inspection; at rendering time, it constrains the camera to stay at a given distance to these approximations. The approach requires negligible preprocessing and memory overhead and works well for both mousebased and touch interfaces. An informal user study confirms the impact of the proposed technique.