Towards immersive modeling - Challenges and recommendations

Among the many applications now available in virtual environment (Ves), geometric modeling is gaining in relevance. Immersive environments like the CAVE and the Responsive Workbench offer the possibility of generating drafts and manipulating geometry intuitively. Immersive VE will supply product design with new perspectives. This paper describes a workshop in which thirty-six design professionals, active in various branches of product design, tested three different types of prototype modelers. The analysis of their experience will help to improve such modeling systems and to further develop immersive modeling in general. As a first consequence, we outline a modeling system which extends one of the most successful prototype modelers to a more powerful system.