A motion prediction method for mouse-based navigation

A distributed virtual reality system allows remote users to share and to view a common virtual environment via connected networks. However, network latency and bandwidth are often the most crucial performance bottlenecks. We have recently developed a distributed virtual walkthrough environment that supports on-demand model transmission over the Internet through the use of, in addition to other techniques, a simple prefetching technique called EWMA. Although the prefetching technique has been shown to be effective in predicting 3D motion during our simulation experiments, it is less effective in our prototype experiments. The main reason is that most input devices used for navigation are 2D in nature (mostly 2D mice) and EWMA is not too effective in predicting user motion in moving a 2D mouse. To overcome this limitation, we propose in this paper a method for predicting the user motion in moving the mouse during a 3D navigation. To improve the accuracy of the prediction, we also propose a constrained navigation method. We will demonstrate the effectiveness of the new method through experimental results.