We explore a user interface technique that augments an immersive head tracked display with a hand-held miniature copy of the virtual environment. We call this interface technique the Worlds in Miniature (WIM) metaphor. In addition to the first-person perspective offered by a virtual reality system, a WIM offers a second dynamic viewport onto the virtual environment. Objects may be directly manipulated either through the immersive viewport or through the three-dimensional viewport offered by the WIM. 

We provide the user with an immersive point of view through a headmounted display (HMD) tracked by a Polhemus 6 degree of freedom tracker. To control the position and orientation of the WIM, we outfitted the user's non-dominant hand with a clipboard attached to another Polhemus position sensor. The surface of the clipboard represents the floor of the WIM. By looking into the clipboard, the user gets an aerial view of the entire scene. In his or her other hand, the user holds a tennis ball modeled after the UNC cueball, in which we have installed two buttons and another Polhemus sensor. This buttonball was used as the selection and manipulation tool for all of our user 
observation and WIM development. By pressing the first button on the buttonball, users can select objects; the second button was left open for application-specific actions.  

Since each of the objects in the WIM copy is tied to their counterparts in the immersive environment through pointers and vice versa at the point of WIM creation, the environment itself (in miniature) becomes its own widget for manipulating objects in the environment. Using the WIM, users can easily change points of view and select and manipulate objects. 

Virtual reality on a WIM:  interactive worlds in miniature; Richard Stoakley, Matthew J. Conway, and Randy Pausch; Conference proceedings on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1995, Page 265 
 

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