3D Selection Vault

Balloon Selection

Fingers on a multi-touch table steer a 3D spherical cursor above it, like a helium balloon on a string, for precise selection with resting hands.

How it works

Two adjacent fingers on the tabletop create the balloon. One finger (the anchor) moves it in the horizontal plane; the distance to a second finger sets its height, like pulling a string. A third finger changes the balloon's radius, and placing a finger next to the second one triggers selection of everything inside the balloon. The 3D task is split into a 2D and a 1D positioning task, and the hands rest on the surface.

Papers

• Hrvoje Benko, Steven Feiner (2007). Balloon Selection: A Multi-Finger Technique for Accurate Low-Fatigue 3D Selection. 2007 IEEE Symposium on 3D User Interfaces (3DUI) doi:10.1109/3DUI.2007.340778