A natural user interface for navigating in organized 3D virtual contents

The research activity presented in this paper aim at extending the traditional planar navigation, which is adopted by many desktop applications for searching information, to an experience in a Virtual Reality (VR) environment. In particular, the work proposes a system that allows the user to navigate in virtual environments, in which the objects are spatially organized and sorted. The visualization of virtual object has been designed and an interaction method, based on gestures, has been proposed to trigger the navigation in the environment. The article describes the design and the development of the system, by starting from some considerations about the intuitiveness and naturalness required for a three-dimensional navigation. In addition, an initial case study has been carried out and consists in using the system in a virtual 3D catalogue of furniture. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.