Evaluation of the Command and Control Cube

Application control in virtual environments (VE) is still an open field of research. The Command and Control Cube (C/sup 3/) developed by Grosjean et al. (2001) is a quick access menu for the VE configuration called workbench (a large screen displaying stereoscopic images). The C/sup 3/ presents two modes, one with the graphical display of the cubic structure associated to the C/sup 3/ and a blind mode for expert users, with no feedback. We conduct formal tests of the C/sup 3/ under four different conditions: the visual mode with the graphical display, the blind mode with no feedback and two additional conditions enhancing the expert blind mode: a tactile mode with the tactile feedback, of a Cyberglove/spl trade/ and a sound mode with a standard audio device. Results show that the addition of sound and tactile feedback is more disturbing to the users than the blind mode. The visual mode performs the best although the blind mode achieves some promising results.