GIVEN plus plus - a toolkit for advanced 3D user interface construction

This paper describes the second generation of GIVEN (Gesture-based Interaction in Virtual ENvironments), a toolkit for virtual environment and 3D user interface construction. The goals for the first generation of GIVEN were to have an object oriented platform for testing and evaluating new 3D input devices, developing new 3D user interface paradigms, and to do so within a flexible, general-purpose toolkit structure. GIVEN focused on input device independence as well as gesture based dialogue construction. In using BIVEN, however, it became generally applicable system. Therefore, the second phase of the project, GIVEN++, was initiated. In addition to the above proven capabiblities of GIVEN, newly added features included network distribution of time consuming tasks and multi-user capability. The architecture and applicability of GIVEN++ are described in detail.