Intuitive control of "bird's eye" overview images for navigation in an enormous virtual environment

We propose a manipulation technique to intuitively control the "bird's eye" overview display of an entire large-scale virtual environment in a display system that present a user with both overviews (global views) and a life-size virtual environment (local view) simultaneously. It enables efficient navigation even in enormous and complicated environments using both global and local views. The motion of the bird's eye viewpoint interlocks with the relative motion of the user's viewpoint and his/her hand, therefore, the user can control the "bird's eye" viewpoint by intuitive manipulation. Sophisticated display techniques are obtained based on the proposed method by introducing some constraints on the parameters of the "bird's eye" viewpoint. Experimental results show a combination of the bird's eye overview image and the life-size local image is displayed to the user by reflecting his/her intuitive manipulation.