The main thrust of these projects is to test the ability of the SHADOW System to specify and implement non-WIMP and otherwise non-traditional interfaces. Students are encouraged to be imaginative and creative, both in the types of interfaces explored and in the ways the features of the SHADOW System are exploited. For very large scale developments the possibility of small team joint projects exists, subject to the approval of your adviser or instructor. While no formal criteria for what is or is not a valid project exists, the following list may serve as a starting point for ideas.
SHADOW supports the ability to specify generic constraints (like gravity or projectile motion) as well as being well suited for enforcing continuous relationships (such as the rotation of a car's steering wheel to the orientation front wheels). In theory, this should facilitate creating simulation programs such as flight simulators, ballistic motion models, etc. The SGI in the lab is available for doing high-speed 3-D rendering of such systems.
Games (often somewhere between simulation and fantasy) offer a target rich environment for those who'd like to see what SHADOW can do while also producing something that might be more fun than watching a virtual ball bounce. Games may be done in both 2D and 3D depending on the desires of the student and complexity of the design.
Get away from the 2-D world of your computer screen and ask yourself what you would do with a third dimension if you had a three dimensional desktop to to play with. How would you search a directory or retrieve a file? What about navigating through a visualization of a database? Try to answer the question of "what exactly is a viable 3-D widget?"
Explore out of the mainstream or up and coming input devices and styles such as eye tracking or gesture recognition. Develop techniques for turning continuous streams of data into discrete semantic information, then demonstrate your techniques by developing a small program or two to showcase its uses.
Return to the SHADOW System Projects Page
Return to the SHADOW System Home Page