Examine mode behavior for exploring geospatial worlds

One of the issues raised at 2-day X3D Earth technical requirements workshop (http://www.web3d.org/x3d-earth/workshop2006/) was the need for some uniformity amongst browsers for effective user navigation in X3D Earth worlds. For the scientific data visualization of MBARI's ROV Dive data we have found CosmoPlayer's Examine mode with Shift key set to Turbo Mode and Continuous Seek to be very effective and easy to use with a standard keyboard and mouse.

Here are recommendations to browser developers for implementation of Examine mode:

 1. If mouse pointer is positioned over a TouchSensor then the 
    pointer icon shall change its appearance to indicate that a left 
    mouse click will activate the TouchSensor.

 2. Holding the Shift key overrides any TouchSensor that the pointer 
    may be over and forces the mouse to function as the viewpoint 
    navigation tool. 

 3. Dragging the mouse left and right while holding the left mouse 
    button down causes rotation about a vertical axis that passes 
    through the point of rotation. Left mouse motion moves the near 
    field objects to the left.

 4. Dragging the mouse up and down while holding the left mouse 
    button down causes rotation about a horizontal axis that passes 
    through the point of rotation. Up mouse motion moves near field 
    objects up.

 5. Holding the Ctrl key down modifies the left button down mouse 
    drag movement such that up and down (Y-axis) movement causes the 
    viewpoint to zoom in and out towards/from the point of. Left and 
    right mouse motion while Ctrl is held down has no effect. Shift 
    and Ctrl held at the same time also enables zoom but disables 
    TouchSensors.

 6. Holding the Alt key modifies the mouse movement such that mouse 
    motion while the left mouse button is held down is translated 
    into a pan of the viewpoint in a plane perpendicular to the 
    vector pointing to the point of rotation. Shift and Alt held at 
    the same time also enables pan but disables TouchSensors.

 7. The point of rotation can be set by holding the Shift key while 
    pointing at an object and clicking the left mouse button. To 
    provide feedback that the point has been selected the viewpoint 
    shall zoom about 20 percent of the distance toward that point.

Please fire away on this draft specification.

Best regards, Mike

-- Mike McCann Software Engineer Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute 7700 Sandholdt Road Moss Landing, CA 95039-9644