Design and evaluation of mouse cursors in a stereoscopic desktop environment

In a standard desktop environment a mouse has proven to be an efficient interaction device. However, when working with stereoscopic content, the shape and behavior of a standard 2D mouse cursor is not suitable, as depth conflicts between the cursor and the content can lead to confusion. In this paper, we show that specific 3D cursors can increase accuracy and user comfort. We first discuss several situations in which traditional cursors fail and explain their limitations and shortcomings. Based on these observations, we propose new mouse cursors that are designed for the use in a stereoscopic environment. In particular, we investigate the integration of the cursor in the scene in terms of occlusion, depth matching and shape and propose a new cursor that adapts to the 3D scene. We conducted an experiment to investigate accuracy, speed and comfort of the various interaction solutions.