The navigation wizard: helped metaphor-aware navigation in virtual worlds

Anyone who has ever experienced 3D interfaces will agree that navigating in a 3D world is not a trivial task. The user interface of traditional 3D Browsers provides simple navigation tools that allow the user to modify the orientation, position and focal of the virtual camera. Using these tools, it is common that after some movements, the user is lost in the virtual space and tries to restart from the beginning. This paper presents how this problem is addressed in the context of the CyberNet project [1]. Our underlying principle is to help the user to navigate by adapting the navigation tool to the virtual world.