So, apparently Mozilla is paving some fancy new roads between web browsers and video cards.  With the increasing popularity of apps like google earth and 3d browser-based games, as well as the ubiquity of 3d-accelerated hardware, I think it will probably get a lot more support than previous efforts to bring 3d to the web, which will be great for uses like the ones I just mentioned.

What I can’t believe is this:

“If you think about the traditional browsing experience of flat pages and links this is not a natural way to interact. People are much more used to walking around and picking things up so a 3D browser could lead eventually to a more naturalistic way of interaction.”

I really hope that quote was from a PR flak and not an actual developer. Think about the things you do online. Would any of them be improved by being able to pick things up? I can’t believe that people are still clinging to this Hollywood image of the universal 3D interface. Sure, it looks great on the silver screen, but its really fraught with difficulties, as usability guru Jacob Nielsen has been saying for over ten years:

Evolution optimized homo sapiens for wandering the savannah - moving around a plane - and not swinging through the trees….

Using 3D on a computer adds a range of difficulties:
*The screen and the mouse are both 2D devices, so we don’t get true 3D unless we strap on weird head-gear and buy expensive bats (flying mice)

*It is difficult to control a 3D space with the interaction techniques that are currently in common use since they were designed for 2D manipulation (e.g., dragging, scrolling)

*Users need to pay attention to the navigation of the 3D view in addition to the navigation of the underlying model: the extra controls for flying, zooming, etc. get in the way of the user’s primary task

Certainly, people (especially gamers) are a lot more proficient with 3d navigation than they were 10 years ago, but I think most of those people would agree with me that navigating 3d games is just plain harder than navigating 2D games. The jump to 3D has given us a much greater sense of immersion and more complex environments (which is very important for game-like experiences), but doesn’t convey much more useful information. Most games become much easier to navigate when the player is given a 2D map, and the same is usually true in real life. As Nielsen explains:

Note that 3D works for games because the user does not want to accomplish any goals beyond being entertained. It would be trivial to design a better interface than DOOM if the goal was to kill the bad guys as quickly as possible: give me a 2D map of the area with icons for enemy troops and let me drop bombs on them by clicking the icons. Presto: game over in a few seconds and the good guys win every time. That’s the design you want if you are the Pentagon, but it makes for a boring game.

via The Escapist

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 28th, 2009 at 5:09 pm and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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