Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
Summer 2003
Volume
44
Journal
IEEE Canadian Review
First Page
13
Last Page
15
Abstract
Two-dimensional graphical user interface (GUI) is now firmly established as the preferred interface for most applications. The purpose of this work was to develop a three-dimensional user interface as a front end for a file management system and to evaluate the efficiency of a practical 3D application. In order to create this software, a previously defined 3D graphics engine, called Valve Software’s Half-Life, was extended to provide a directory traversal and the basic file management functions (cut, copy, paste, delete). The project was divided into two basic components: generating the 3D “world”, and altering the Half-Life engine to provide some features of file management.