Apologies for cross-posting

*Call for Participation: 3DUI Contest* 


*Description*

This year, IEEE 3DUI will hold the 4th annual 3DUI Contest. It is open to anyone interested in 3D user interfaces, from researchers to students, enthusiasts, and professionals. The goal is to find innovative solutions to classic 3DUI problems (navigation, selection, manipulation). Think outside the box, unleash your creativity, and show your ideas to the 3DUI community! You may use whatever software and hardware you want to achieve the task, including, but not limited to: simple mouse/keyboard, specialized controllers, haptic devices, multi-touch tables, 3D trackers, head-mounted displays, and projection systems.
 

*Problem Description*

In the year 2007 filmmaker Bruce Branit  released a seminal science fiction film called the “World Builder”, which shows a futuristic user interface that enables an actor to build an entire virtual world in a computer program:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzFpg271sm8&noredirect=1

This year’s task for the 3DUI Grand Contest is to implement a “world builder” interface using current-state technology, which enables a user to create a virtual 3D environment from scratch.  The system should be designed for at least one user, who should be presented with a first-person view of the environment, with the goal of building a 3D environment in the most efficient way while not limiting the user’s abilities. The user interface should minimally enable a user to navigate in the virtual scene, as well as create, select, and manipulate (translate, rotate, scale and texture) simple virtual objects (e.g., basic forms or prefabs).  The in- and output hard- and software, and modalities are for the individual teams to decide. The effectiveness and originality of the interface will be one of the criteria used to judge the winners of the contest.

All teams should perform a pilot evaluation of their world builder interface with at least two expert users (preferably not the authors), as well as two novice first-time users. In this evaluation the users should get the task to use the world builder interface to create a virtual model of a major landmark of the team’s choice, preferably from the Disney World in Orlando, Florida, where 3DUI 2013 will be held. Similar to the task shown in the science fiction film, users should have a fixed amount of time (15 minutes) to build an appealing virtual replica of the real scene. The quality of the resulting 3D environment will be one criterion of the evaluation. The study participants should judge the usability of the interface, including ease of use, intuitiveness, etc. Questionnaire results should be reported in the submitted short paper (see below). The quality and rigor of the evaluation will be one criterion used to judge the winners of the contest, but a large number of participants is not required. The major criterion for evaluating submissions will be the usability of the 3D UI. You are free to provide the modeling tools you wish (besides pure creation, translation, rotation and scale), and to place your system anywhere in the continuum between pure scene composition and object modeling, but remember that the contest focuses ultimately on the interface, and that submissions will be judged accordingly.

*Rules*

Teams of up to ten people can submit solutions.  We expect the following material to be 

- A video that presents the solution to the public, including an explanation of the equipment, software, and interaction techniques used to solve the problem.  Additionally, the video should include representative footage of example users as they perform the task.  If your submission is accepted, the video will be included in the electronic proceedings.

 - A short paper of two pages, with a description of the solution, details about the hardware and software used, and results from the basic user study.  If your submission is accepted, this paper will be included in the 3DUI proceedings, and therefore must be formatted using the IEEE Computer Society format.

We will have two categories of prizes this year: A winner will be determined by a panel of expert judges, based on the video and paper submissions, and participants will have the chance to win a people’s choice award at the conference.  The judging will be based upon a variety of criteria, including: the effectiveness of the solution at accomplishing the task; how innovative the solution was; the rigor of the evaluation; and the professional quality of the video and paper. An extra prize will be awarded to the best low-cost/minimally-intrusive solution. 

If your submission is accepted, you will be also invited to participate in a live demo session at the conference, where you will be given the opportunity to directly showcase your work to the 3DUI community.  If a live demo is not feasible, then we will publicly display your video during the conference session.

Videos should have a length of approximately 4-6 minutes, and should include the title along with the names and affiliations of the contestants.  The submitted file should be a high quality compressed video with a size of no
more than 50 MB.  We will accept videos in MPEG (.mpg), Quicktime (.mov), AVI (.avi), MP4 (.mp4), Matroska (.mkv), or Flash Video (.flv) formats.

The submission deadline is *December 23, 2012*.  The paper and videos must be submitted directly to the chairs on that date (“[log in to unmask]”). The notification of acceptance is on *January 3, 2012*. The camera ready papers are due on *January 10, 2012*. Please ensure that all materials are of high quality.



*Prizes*

To be determined. Past prizes have included high-end graphics cards, game input devices, software licenses and cash.


*Contact Information*

The contest chairs are:

Robert J. Teather, York University, Canada
 
Gerd Bruder, University of Würzburg, Germany
 
Carlos Andujar, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain

You may contact us at:  [log in to unmask]



*Organization and Important Dates*

August 26: The contest is opened.

December 23:  Submission date for the papers and videos.

January 3: Notification of acceptance to the contest.

January 10: Camera-ready papers due.

March 16 & 17: Live demo session and announcement of winners at the conference.


*Contest website*

http://3dui.org/cfp-3dui-contest  -- See here for additional details and resources!

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