3D Selection Vault

Bubble Cursor

A 3D cursor sphere grows or shrinks so that it always contains exactly the nearest target.

How it works

Move the 3D cursor through the scene. The bubble resizes to capture the closest target, which is selected on a button press. Vanacken et al. (2007) adapted the 2D bubble cursor to 3D.

Papers

• Vanacken, L., Grossman, T. (2007). Exploring the effects of environment density and target visibility on object selection in 3D virtual environments. doi:10.1109/3DUI.2007.340783
• Ferran Argelaguet, Carlos Andujar (2013). A survey of 3D object selection techniques for virtual environments. Computers & Graphics doi:10.1016/j.cag.2012.12.003
• Susu Huang, Daqing Qi, Jiabin Yuan, Huawei Tu (2019). Review of studies on target acquisition in virtual reality based on the crossing paradigm. Virtual Reality & Intelligent Hardware doi:10.3724/sp.j.2096-5796.2019.0006
• Jan Leusmann (2021). A Literature Review on Distant Object Selection Methods. Master's thesis, University of Stuttgart doi:10.18419/opus-12060
• Xuehuai Shi, Yuhan Duan, Ziteng Wang, Jian Wu, Zhiwen Shao, Jieming Yin, Lili Wang (2026). MOA: Efficient Scene-Aware Multi-Object Arrangement in VR. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 32(2), 2183-2199 doi:10.1109/TVCG.2025.3636062
• Yiqin Lu, Chun Yu, Yuanchun Shi (2020). Investigating Bubble Mechanism for Ray-Casting to Improve 3D Target Acquisition in Virtual Reality. 2020 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR) doi:10.1109/vr46266.2020.00021